Mrs. Dempster I'm
sure there's a great change in her mind towards Mr. Tryan. I noticed how
eagerly she listened to the sermon, and she's come with Mrs. Pettifer,
you see. We ought to go and give her a welcome among us.'

'Why, my dear, we've never spoke friendly these five year. You know she's
been as haughty as anything since I quarrelled with her husband. However,
let bygones be bygones: I've no grudge again' the poor thing, more
particular as she must ha' flew in her husband's face to come an' hear
Mr. Tryan. Yes, let us go an' speak to her.'

The friendly words and looks touched Janet a little too keenly, and Mrs.
Pettifer wisely hurried her home by the least-frequented road. When they
reached home, a violent fit of weeping, followed by continuous lassitude,
showed that the emotions of the morning had overstrained her nerves. She
was suffering, too, from the absence of the long-accustomed stimulus
which she had promised Mr. Tryan not to touch again. The poor thing was
conscious of this, and dreaded her own weakness, as the victim of
intermittent insanity dreads the oncoming of the old illusion.

'Mother,' she whispered, when Mrs. Raynor urged her to lie down and rest
all the afternoon, that she might be the better prepared to see Mr. Tryan
in the evening 'mother, don't let me have anything if I ask for it.'

In the mother's mind there was the same anxiety, and in her it was
mingled with another fear--the fear lest Janet, in her present excited
state of mind, should take some premature step in relation to her
husband, which might lead back to all the former troubles. The hint she
had thrown out in the morning of her wish to return to him after a time,
showed a new eagerness for difficult duties, that only made the
long-saddened sober mother tremble. But as evening approached, Janet's
morning heroism all forsook her: her imagination influenced by physical
depression as well as by mental habits, was haunted by the vision of her
husband's return home, and she began to shudder with the yesterday's
dread. She heard him calling her, she saw him going to her mother's to
look for her, she felt sure he would find her out, and burst in upon her.

'Pray, pray, don't leave me, don't go to church,' she said to Mrs.
Pettifer. 'You and mother both stay with me till Mr. Tryan comes.'

At twenty minutes past six the church bells were ringing for the evening
service, and soon the congregation was streaming along Orchard Street in