uts the deed off, calls the glory from the grey." Were
her wrong-doing only of the sort to be neatly cut off in that manner,
how gladly would she own up. How certain would she be of obtaining
full forgiveness, and how blissfully could she go on thence-forward!

But hers wasn't that sort. Hers was the sort that goes on and on and
on. After making the beginning, there was no hope, any more than there
was of stopping a ball when one starts it to rolling down a steep,
smooth hill. And besides, it was of the very nature of that which had
hurt Cousin Julia so cruelly in the case of her lover of twenty-odd
years ago. For it was for Elsie's own advantage that she had entered
upon the course of deceit, and it was she that was profiting by it,
daily and hourly. She had imposed herself upon one whom she had no
claim whatever upon for the sake of making things easier and pleasanter
for herself--of gaining her own way. And wasn't she continuing the
imposition largely for the same reason?

No, she wasn't doing that--at least not now. Absolutely selfish as her
motive may have been in the first place, these last days had shown her
that another element was now involved. Her longing to be an actress
remained the same. Her distaste for the idea of life at the parsonage
in Enderby had been increased almost to horror by the glimpses she had
had through her friend's letters of what seemed to her its dreary and
complacent domesticity. Nevertheless, at this moment she felt that she
would give up the former and accept the latter without a murmur if she
could thereby measure up to Cousin Julia's standard, and yet, in the
process, hurt neither her nor Elsie Marley.

But there was no blinking the fact that Cousin Julia's heart was so
bound up in her that the discovery of her duplicity would wound her
cruelly; indeed, Elsie couldn't bear to contemplate what it would mean
to her. As for Elsie Marley--she was apparently, for her part, equally
bound up in the Middletons, and the shock and change would be terribly
painful to her. Moreover, she was, in a way, almost as innocent as
Cousin Julia herself. Her masquerading was only masquerading. She had
only accepted, in her sweet, docile manner, her part in the plan that
Elsie had made to further her own interests. The wrong was all her
own, truly; but any attempt to undo it would hurt the innocent Elsie at
least equally.

What could she do? Was she really, as it seemed, bound hand and