CHAPTER XX.
Look through a keyhole, and your eye will be sore.
During the weeks which followed Fay's confession Magdalen became aware that she watched her, and aware also that she avoided her, was never alone with her if she could help it.
At this time Fay began to do many small kindnesses, and to talk much of the importance of work for others, of the duty of taking an interest in our fellow creatures.

This was a new departure.

She had not so far evinced the faintest interest in the dull routine of home duties which are of the nature of kindnesses, and had often reproached Magdalen for spending herself in them.

To play halma with zest all the evening with a parent who must always win, to read the papers to him by the hour, not while he listened, but while he slept--Fay scorned these humble efforts of Magdalen's.

She shewed no disposition to emulate them; but she did shew a feverish tendency towards isolated acts of benevolence outside the home life, which precluded any claim upon her by arousing a hope of their continuance, which tied her to nothing.