"You have always been very kind to me," Laline said, in dull steady tones. "I ought to have confided in you fully from the first; but it is useless to speak of that now."
"You seem so strangely resigned," the little lady exclaimed, peering at her curiously—"almost as though you did not realise what you are doing! It is a terrible thing to give your whole life into the keeping of a man you can neither love nor respect; but perhaps your feelings towards him have changed."
A shiver ran through Laline's frame. For a moment her dry lips refused to speak. Then at last she answered in unnaturally low level tones—
"Love is not everything! I want to do my duty!"
"It is so difficult to say what is one's duty," the elder woman said. "We owe duty to ourselves first of all. We may starve our own souls while fulfilling what we imagine to be our duty towards others. Is your mind quite made up?"
"Quite!"
"Take this, then, as a parting gift."
With a little key which hung at her watch-chain Mrs. Vandeleur unlocked a glass-covered table in which she kept some of the more valuable of her amulets and charms. Drawing out a slender gold chain of Eastern workmanship, from which a five-pointed star in beaten gold open-work depended, she flung it round the girl's neck. On the star some words were inscribed in Oriental letters.
"It is a charm," she whispered—"a charm which will preserve its wearer against the wickedness of evil minds. Wear it for my sake. Good-bye, my poor child! Remember, if you find the life impossible, you have always a home with me."
"Good-bye," Laline said, with a pale smile—"and thank you! But I shall not come back."