And behold, she knew not how or why, she felt that her mother had forsworn herself.

A strong shudder passed through her; she rose and was leaving the room in silence.
"Where are you going, hussy?
Stop!" screamed her mother between her teeth, her rage and cruelty rising, as it will with weak natures, in the very act of triumph,--"to your young man ?" "To pray," said Grace, quietly; and locking herself into the empty schoolroom, gave vent to all her feelings, but not in tears.
How she upbraided herself!--She had not used her strength; she had not told her mother all her heart.

And yet how could she tell her heart?
How face her mother with such vague suspicions, hardly supported by a single fact?
How argue it out against her like a lawyer, and convict her to her face?
What daughter could do that, who had human love and reverence left in her?
No! to touch her inward witness, as the Quakers well and truly term it, was the only method: and it had failed.

"God help me!" was her only cry: but the help did not come yet; there came over her instead a feeling of utter loneliness.

Willis dead; Thurnall gone; her mother estranged; and, like a child lost upon a great moor, she looked round all heaven and earth, and there was none to counsel, none to guide-- perhaps not even God.