d ash, we saw a little
brown figure. It was Viola, crouched together with her head on her
knees, sitting on the bank. She started up and tried to say something
petulantly joking about our always dogging her, but she broke down in a
flood of tears to which sheer weariness conduced. She was tired out at
last, footsore, and hardly able to move a limb, when Dermot almost
lifted her into the carriage, the dreadful, hard self-control all over
now, when, in those long lanes, with the Maybushes meeting overhead,
she leant against me and sobbed with long-pent anguish, while her
brother walked at the pony's head.

She had quite broken down now, and her natural self was come back to
us. When we came home, I got her up to her own room and Dermot went to
his mother. She had a long, quiet sleep, lying on her bed, and when
she woke it was growing dark on the May evening. She looked at me a
little while without speaking, and her eyes were soft again.

"Lucy," she said, "I think I have been very naughty, but they made me
so."

I said, as I kissed her, that I thought "they" had done so.

"_He_ would not have let anybody make him so," she said. "I was the
bad one. I was almost unfaithful. I told him so to-day."

"Not unfaithful, dearest, only harassed and miserable beyond all
bearing."

"Nothing is beyond bearing. I said so to myself over and over again.
That was why I would let no one see that I minded."

"You tried to bear it proudly, all by yourself," I said; "that was what
made it so dreadful."

"He said it was God's will," said poor Viola, "but I knew it was
mamma's. I did what he told me, Lucy; I did not get so wrong as long
as he lived, but after that I did not care what became of me, and yet I
did love him as much as ever."

She seemed to look on me as his representative, and was now ready to
take any persuasion of mine as coming from him. She admitted her
mother, was gentle and natural with her, ate and drank at her bidding,
and went to bed pale and worn down, but not ill. She never gave in or
professed indisposition, but for more than ten days she "went softly,"
was very tired, and equal to nothing but lying on the sofa and sitting
in the garden; and it was in those days that sometimes with her
brother, sometimes with me, she went over all that we could tell her,
or she tell us, of him who had been so dear to us all. The first time
she was alone with Dermot, she kissed every remaining mark she could
find