"But you—you didn't mean it!" Faith asked, but in more gentle tone. "You didn't mean it?"
"I—I did," stammered Audrey, with quivering lip, "but—I don't now. I myself am the only thing I am ashamed of now," and bursting into tears she flew upstairs again and shut herself in her attic.
CHAPTER VII.
Almost before her eyes were open the next morning, Audrey felt as though some big black weight lay upon her, as though something very dreadful had happened. And then gradually sleep cleared from her brain, and recollection came back.
She had been petty, mean, and everyone knew it, everyone must despise her. She had hurt her own mother, she had hurt them all. She had shown them that she was ashamed of them—and why? Not because they had done anything wrong, or despicable, but because they were poor and were obliged to live in a shabby house, shabbily furnished!
"Oh, I can never live it down," she thought miserably. "I can never make them forget, and think well of me again!" She buried her face in her pillow and groaned aloud. She wished wildly for all sort of impossible things to happen, that she could put miles and miles, and oceans and continents between herself and everybody—or that she could wipe out all recollection of her foolishness from everyone's mind, or never, never have to meet the Vivians again.
There is no way, though, of blotting out in a moment our wrongdoing, our foolishness, our mistakes. They cannot be wiped off, as a sum off a slate, nor the results, nor the memory of them. There is nothing to be done but to face the consequences bravely, to live them down hour by hour; so, profiting by the lesson thus learnt, that in time those about us will find it hard to believe that we ever were so foolish, or wicked. Through genuine repentance and sorrow only can we expiate our faults, and Audrey had sense enough to know this.
"I have just got to live through it," she sighed miserably, "but oh, I wish I hadn't hurt mother so."
As she was passing her mother's bedroom door on her way downstairs, a sudden impulse made her knock.