It was very early in the morning when she awoke. It was not yet five o'clock. Florence struck a light and saw by the little clock on the mantelpiece that the hands pointed to a quarter to five.
"There is time," she thought, eagerly. She sat up on her elbow and reflected. Her eyes were bright, her face paler than ever. Presently she got out of bed and fell on her knees; she pressed her face against the side of the bed, and it is doubtful whether many words came to her, but when she rose at last she seemed to hear an inward voice, and the voice was saying, "Refuse the Evil and choose the Good."
The voice kept on saying, "Refuse the Evil and choose the Good," and Florence felt more and more frightened, and more and more intensely anxious to do something in great haste before she had time for reflection.
She lit the candles and put them on the writing-table at the foot of the bed, and then she sat by the writing-table and pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write. She wrote rapidly, with scarcely a pause. Whenever she stopped the voice kept saying louder and clearer, louder and clearer, "Refuse the Evil and choose the Good."
Florence went on writing. At last she had finished. She folded up the sheet of paper and put it into an envelope. Then she hastily opened the drawer which contained the silver wreath and the ruby locket and the purse of gold and the parchment scroll. She collected them hastily, scarcely glancing at them, wrapped up in tissue-paper, then in brown, tied the little parcel with string, slipped the note inside the string and laid it on the table.
The voice which kept speaking to her was now quieter; it ceased to say, "Refuse the Evil," but once again through the silent room she seemed to hear the echo of the words, calm, great, all knowing, "Choose the Good, choose the Good," and then she hastily, very hastily got into her clothes, for it seemed to her that there was nothing else worth while in all the world but the following, the obeying of this voice. To choose the Good was greater than to choose Happiness, greater than to choose Ambition, greater than to choose Wealth. It was the only thing.
So she dressed herself in her everyday clothes, and, taking the little parcel, she softly unfastened the door, and then she slipped down through the silent house and entered Sir John Wallis's study, and laid the packet which contained all the symbols of her success and her letter of confession on his desk. Having done this, she turned away, came upstairs softly, and, going down another corridor, opened the door of her mother's room and went in.
Mrs. Aylmer was lying sound asleep; it was not yet six o'clock. She was very tired and she was sleeping heavily; she was enjoying pleasant dreams in her sleep, dreams of Florence, her dear, her darling, the success Florence had won, the happy future which lay before her.
Mrs. Aylmer's dreams were all one glow of great bliss, and in the midst of them she felt a cold, small hand laid upon her own, and, opening her eyes, she saw Florence bending over her.
"Mummy," said Florence, "I want you to get up at once."