a remorseful pity for, and a mute yearning toward this woman whom she
had so bitterly, yet so unconsciously wronged. She would not wrong her
more deeply still; the wrong should end just as she had thought it had
ended, when Denis dropped her hand and left her standing alone before
the fire that last night in Paris. This resolve rose up in her mind with
a power so overwhelming, that it carried before it all the past of
rebellion, and pain, and love. She would go away before he knew that she
had been with him at all. She would herself be the means of bringing to
pass the end she had only so short a time ago rebelled against so
passionately. He should think it was his promised wife who had been with
him from the first. She would make Priscilla promise that it should be
so. Having resolved this, her new courage--courage, though it was so
full of desperate, heart-sick pain, helped her to ask a question bearing
upon her thoughts. She touched the motionless figure with her hand.

"Did Pamela come here to bring me away?" she asked.

Priscilla Gower turned, half starting, as though from a reverie.

"What did you say?" she said.

"Did Pamela come to take me away from here?" Theo repeated.

"No," she said. "Do not be afraid of that."

Theo looked out of the window, straight over her folded arms. The answer
had not been given unkindly, but she could not look at Priscilla Gower,
in saying what she had to say.

"I am not afraid," she said. "I think it would be best; I must go back
to Paris or to--to Downport, before Mr. Oglethorpe knows I have been
here at all. You can take care of him now--and there is no need that he
should know I ever came to St. Quentin. I dare say I was very unwise in
coming as I did; but, I am afraid I would do the same thing again under
the same circumstances. If you will be so kind as to let him think
that--that it was you who came----"

Priscilla Gower interrupted her here, in the same manner, and with the
same words, as she had interrupted her before.

"Hush!" she said. "You are making a mistake, again----"

She did not finish what she was saying. A hurried footstep upon the
stairs stopped her; and as both turned toward the door, it was opened,
and Pamela stood upon the threshold and faced them, looking at each in
the breathless pause that followed.

"There has been a change," she said. "A change for the worse. I have
sent for the doctor. You had better come down-stairs at once, Theodora,
you h