le white nimble wrists, her hair pushed back from her
cheeks, pushed quite behind one delicate ear, her eyes shining with all
those lights of energy and purpose which came to them as soon as she
took up her own character again. She met his eye with a little air of
defiance, involuntary, and almost unconscious. "It is quite true," said
Nettie, bursting forth in sudden self-justification; "I have my work to
do, and I must do it as best I can. I cannot keep considering you all,
and losing my life. I must do what God has given me to do, or I must
die."

Never had Nettie been so near breaking down, and falling into sudden
womanish tears and despair. She would not yield to the overpowering
momentary passion. She clutched at the bundle of frocks again, and made
room for them spasmodically in the box which she had already packed.
Edward Rider stood silent, gazing at her as in her sudden anguish Nettie
pulled down and reconstructed that curious honeycomb. But he had not come
here merely to gaze, while the catastrophe was preparing. He went up and
seized her busy hands, raised her up in spite of her resistance, and
thrust away, with an exclamation of disgust, that great box in which all
his hopes were being packed away. "There is first a question to settle
between you and me," cried the doctor: "you shall not do it. No; I
forbid it, Nettie. Because you are wilful," cried Edward Rider, hoarse
and violent, grasping the hands tighter, with a strain in which other
passions than love mingled, "am I to give up all the rights of a man?
You are going away without even giving me just warning--without a word,
without a sign; and you think I will permit it, Nettie? Never--by
heaven!"

"Dr Edward," said Nettie, trembling, half with terror, half with
resolution, "you have no authority over me. We are two people--we are
not one. I should not have gone away without a word or a sign. I should
have said good-bye to you, whatever had happened; but that is different
from permitting or forbidding. Let us say good-bye now and get it over,
if that will please you better," she cried, drawing her hands from his
grasp; "but I do not interfere with your business, and I must do mine my
own way."

The doctor was in no mood to argue. He thrust the big box she had packed
away into a corner, and closed it with a vindictive clang. It gave him a
little room to move in that little commonplace hall, with its dim lamp,
which had witnessed so many of the most mem