Rest, that was what she wanted, and if she were wicked she would not find it for evermore. What was being wicked? People had behaved wickedly to her, they had taken from her the one love that would have been the stay of her life; they had made her most solemn vows nothing. She had been wickedly treated, but did it follow that she must be wicked?
"I could never be a sinner," she said; "I have not the nerve, I have not the strength. I could never be a sinner."
Lightly enough she turned those pages; she saw the picture of Ruth in the corn-field—simple, loving Ruth, whose words have stood the finest love-story ever written since she uttered them. There was another picture of Queen Esther fainting in the awful presence of Ahasuerus the king; another of a fair young Madonna holding in her arms a little child; another of the Magdalen, her golden hair wet with tears; another of a Sacred Head bent low in the agonies of death. She looked long at that, for underneath it was written, "For our sins." Wickedness meant sin. Standing there, her hand resting on the page, all the truth seemed to come home to her. It would be a sin to cause disunion between husband and wife; it would be a sin to cause the husband of another woman to love her; it would be a sin to give way to the desire of vengeance that was burning her heart away, and these words were so pathetic, "For our sins." She had laid her face on that picture of the Crucifixion, and burning tears fell from her eyes over it.
"God have mercy on me," she had prayed, "and save me from myself."
Then she had slept, and here was the morrow, a lovely summer day with the air all fragrance, the birds all song, and she was still doing hard battle with herself, for, as she had said to herself, hers was "a mad love—a cruel, mad love."
And as she stood watching the distant hills, wondering if in the blue sky that hung over them there was peace, a servant once more entered the room, holding a card in her hand.
"Lady Chandos," said Leone, wonderingly; "ask her in here."
She looked in surprise, almost too great for words, at the little card. Lance's wife, who had refused to speak to her, who had disdained to touch her outstretched hand—Lance's wife coming to speak to her.
What could it mean? Were the whole race of the Lanswells coming to her?
The next moment a fair, sweet face was smiling into hers, a face she had seen last darkened with anger, but which was fair and bright now, with the light of a holy love.