"'Everything that is contrary to his authority'" — she added after a minute, — "how can I know exactly all that?"
He still said nothing, but touched with his finger once or twice the book in his hand.
Elizabeth looked, and the tears came to her eyes.
"You know, —" she said, hesitating a little, — "what physicians say of involuntary muscular resistance, that the physical frame makes sometimes?"
He answered her with an instant's light of intelligence, and then with the darkened look of sorrow. But he took his bible away with him and said no more.
Elizabeth sat down and struggled with herself and with the different passions which had been at work in her mind, till she was wearied out; and then she slept.
She waked up in the middle of the night, to find the lamps burning bright and Clam asleep on the floor by her side; she herself was sitting yet where she had been sitting in the evening, on a low seat with her head on the sofa cushion. She got up and with a sort of new spring of hope and cheer, whence come she knew not, laid herself on the sofa and slept till the morning.
"You'd best be up, Miss 'Lizabeth," were Clam's first words.
"Why?" said Elizabeth springing up.
"It's time," said her handmaiden.