CHAPTER V.The Lint-scraping and Bandage-making Union.
At length I have acted my severest part: I feel the woman breaking in upon me, And melt about my heart: My tears will flow.
-- Addison.
Rachel Bond's will had carried her triumphantly through a terrible ordeal--how terrible no one could guess, unless he followed her to her room after the interview and saw her alone with her agony.

She did not weep.

Tears did not lie near the surface with her.

The lachrymal glands had none of that ready sensitiveness which gives many superficial women the credit of deep feeling.

But when she did weep it was not an April shower, but a midsummer tempest.
Now it was as if her intense grief were a powerful cautery which seared and sealed every duct of the fountain of tears and left her eyes hot and dry as her heart was ashes.
With pallid face and lips set until the blood was forced from them, and they made a thin purplish line in the pale flesh, she walked the floor back and forth, ever back and forth, until a half-stumble, as she was turning in a dreary round, revealed to her that she was almost dropping from exhaustion.
She had thought her love for Harry had received its death-blow when her pride in him had been so rudely shattered.