She stole back to her room, and lighted with an unsteady hand a bedroom candle, whose flame flickered upon a distorted, little dark face.

For as she had sat under the tree she had, after a while, heard whispering begin quite near her; had caught, even in the darkness, a gleam of white, and had therefore deliberately sat and listened.
* * * * * There could be, to the purely normal geniality of Emily Walderhurst's nature, no greater relief than the recognition that a cloud had passed from the mood of another.
When Hester appeared the next morning at the breakfast-table, she had emerged from her humour of the day before and was almost affectionate in her amiability.

The meal at an end, she walked with Emily in the garden.
She had never shown such interest in what pertained to her as she revealed this morning.

Something she had always before lacked Emily recognised in her for the first time,--a desire to ask friendly questions, to verge on the confidential.

They talked long and without reserve.