She felt the foreboding that it might, in some of its circumstances, be her story too--without the peaceful end.
Into what community of merciful women could _she_ be received, in her sorest need?
What religious consolations would encourage her penitence?
What prayers, what hopes, would reconcile her, on her death-bed, to the common doom?
She sighed as she folded up Captain Bennydeck's letter and put it in her bosom, to be read again.

"If my lot had fallen among good people," she thought, "perhaps I might have belonged to the Church which took care of that poor girl." Her mind was still pursuing its own sad course of inquiry; she was wondering in what part of England Sandyseal might be; she was asking herself if the Nuns at the old moated house ever opened their doors to women, whose one claim on their common Christianity was the claim to be pitied--when she heard Linley's footsteps approaching the door.
His tone was kind; his manner was gentle; his tender interest in her seemed to have revived.

Her long absence had alarmed him; he feared she might be ill.

"I was only thinking," she said.

He smiled, and sat down by her, and asked if she had been thinking of the place that they should go to when they left London..