Each day that passed seemed to add to the trouble in the heart of these young people; to widen the difficulty of expressing themselves.  To Stephen, who had accepted the new condition of things and whose whole nature had bloomed again under the sunshine of hope, it was the less intolerable.  She had set herself to wait, as had countless thousands of women before her; and as due proportion will, till the final cataclysm abolishes earthly unions.  But Harold felt the growth, both positive and negative, as a new torture; and he began to feel that he would be unable to go through with it.  In his heart was the constant struggle of hope; and in opposition to it the seeming realisation of every new fancy of evil.  That bitter hour, when the whole of creation was for him turned upside down, was having its sad effect at last.  Had it not been for that horrid remembrance he would have come to believe enough in himself to put his future to the test.  He would have made an opportunity at which Stephen and himself would have with the fires of their mutual love burned away the encircling mist.  There are times when a single minute of commonsense would turn sorrow into joy; and yet that minute, our own natures being the opposing forces, will be allowed to pass.  
Those who loved these young people were much concerned about them.  Mrs. Stonehouse took their trouble so much to heart that she spoke to her husband about it, seriously advising that one or other of them should make an effort to bring things in the right way for their happiness.  The woman was sure of the woman’s feeling.  It is from men, not women, that women hide their love.  By side-glances and unthinking moments women note and learn.  The man knew already, from his own lips, of the man’s passion.  But his lips were sealed by his loyalty; and he said earnestly:
 
‘My dear, we must not interfere.  Not now, at any rate; we might cause them great trouble.  I am as sure as you are that they really love each other.  But they must win happiness by themselves and through themselves alone.  Otherwise it would never be to them what it ought to be; what it might be; what it will be!’
 
So these friends were silent, and the little tragedy developed.  Harold’s patience began to give way under the constant strain of self-suppression.  Stephen tried to hide her love and fear, under the mask of a gracious calm.  This the other took for indifference.
 
At last there came an hour which was full of new, hopeless agony to Stephen.  She heard Harold, in a fragment of conversation, speak to Mr. Stonehouse of the need of returning to Alaska.  That sounded like a word of doom.  In her inmost heart she knew that Harold loved her; and had she been free she would have herself spoken the words which would have drawn the full truth to them both.  But how could she do so, having the remembrance of that other episode; when, without the reality of love, she had declared herself? . . . Oh! the shame of it . . . The folly! . . . And Harold knew it all!  How could he ever believe that it was real this time! . . .
 
By the exercise of that self-restraint which long suffering had taught her, Stephen so managed to control herself that none of her guests realised what a blow she had received from a casual word.  She bore herself gallantly till the last moment.  After the old fashion of her youth, she had from the Castle steps seen their departure.  Then she took her way to her own room, and locked herself in.  She did not often, in these days, give way to tears; when she did cry it was as a luxury, and not from poignant cause.  Her deep emotion was dry-eyed as of old.  Now, she did not cry, she sat still, her hands clasped below her knees, with set white face gazing out on the far-off sea.  For hours she sat there lonely; staring fixedly all the time, though her thoughts were whirling wildly.  At first she had some vague purpose, which she hoped might eventually work out into a plan.  But thought would not come.  Everywhere there was the same beginning: a wild, burning desire to let Harold understand her feeling towards him; to blot out, with the conviction of trust and love, those bitter moments when in the madness of her overstrung passion she had heaped such insult upon him.  Everywhere the same end: an impasse.  He seemingly could not, would not, understand.  She knew now that the man had diffidences, forbearances, self-judgments and self-denials which made for the suppression, in what he considered to be her interest, of his own desires.  This was tragedy indeed!  Again and again came back the remembrance of that bitter regret of her Aunt Laetitia, which no happiness and no pain of her own had ever been able to efface:
 
‘To love; and be helpless!  To wait, and wait, and wait; with heart all aflame!  To hope, and hope; till time seemed to have passed away, and all the world to stand still on your hopeless misery!  To know that a word might open up Heaven; and yet to have to remain mute!  To keep back the glances that could enlighten, to modulate the tones that might betray!  To see all you hoped for passing away . . . !’
 
At last she seemed to understand the true force of pride; which has in it a thousand forces of its own, positive, negative, restrainful.  Oh! how blind she had been!  How little she had learned from the miseries that the other woman whom she loved had suffered!  How unsympathetic she had been; how self-engrossed; how callous to the sensibilities of others!  And now to her, in her turn, had come the same suffering; the same galling of the iron fetters of pride, and of convention which is its original expression!  Must it be that the very salt of youth must lose its savour, before the joys of youth could be won!  What, after all, was youth if out of its own inherent power it must work its own destruction!  If youth was so, why not then trust the wisdom of age?  If youth could not act for its own redemption . . .
 
Here the rudiment of a thought struck her and changed the current of her reason.  A thought so winged with hope that she dared not even try to complete it! . . . She thought, and thought till the long autumn shadows fell around her.  But the misty purpose had become real.
 
After dinner she went up alone to the mill.  It was late for a visit, for the Silver Lady kept early hours.  But she found her friend as usual in her room, whose windows swept the course of the sun.  Seeing that her visitor was in a state of mental disturbance such as she had once before exhibited, she blew out the candles and took the same seat in the eastern window she had occupied on the night which they both so well remembered.
 
Stephen understood both acts, and was grateful afresh.  The darkness would be a help to her in what she had to say; and the resumption of the old seat and attitude did away with the awkwardness of new confidence.  During the weeks that had passed Stephen had kept her friend informed of the rescue and progress of the injured man.  Since the discovery of Harold’s identity she had allowed her to infer her feeling towards him.
 
Shyly she had conveyed her hopes that all the bitter part of the past might be wiped out.  To the woman who already knew of the love that had always been, but had only awakened to consciousness in the absence of its object, a hint was sufficient to build upon.  She had noticed the gloom that had of late been creeping over the girl’s happiness; and she had been much troubled about it.  But she had thought it wiser to be silent; she well knew that should unhappily the time for comfort come, it must be precluded by new and more explicit confidence.  So she too had been anxiously waiting the progress of events.  Now; as she put her arms round the girl she said softly; not in the whisper which implies doubt of some kind, but in the soft voices which conveys sympathy and trust:
 
‘Tell me, dear child!’
 
And then in broken words shyly spoken, and spoken in such a way that the silences were more eloquent than the words, the girl conveyed what was in her heart.  The other listened, now and again stroking the beautiful hair.  When all was said, there was a brief pause.  The Silver Lady spoke no word; but the pressure of her delicate hand conveyed sympathy.
 
In but a half-conscious way, in words that came so shrinkingly through the darkness that they hardly reached the ear bent low to catch them, came Stephen’s murmured thought:
 
‘Oh, if he only knew!  And I can’t tell him; I can’t! dare not!  I must not.  How could I dishonour him by bearing myself towards him as to that other . . . worthless . . . !  Oh! the happy, happy girls, who have mothers . . . !’  All the muscles of her body seemed to shrink and collapse, till she was like an inert mass at the Silver Lady’s feet.
 
But the other understood!
 
 After a long, long pause; when Stephen’s sobbing had died away; when each muscle of her body had become rigid on its return to normal calm; the Silver Lady began to talk of other matters, and conversation became normal.  Stephen’s courage seemed somehow to be restored, and she talked brightly.
 
Before they parted the Silver Lady made a request.  She said in her natural voice:
 
‘Couldst thou bring that gallant man who saved so many lives, and to whom the Lord was so good in the restoration of his sight, to see me?  Thou knowest I have made a resolution not to go forth from this calm place whilst I may remain.  But I should like to see him before he returns to that far North where he has done such wonders.  He is evidently a man of kind heart; perhaps he will not mind coming to see a lonely woman who is no longer young.  There is much I should like to ask him of that land of which nothing was known in my own youth.  Perhaps he will not mind seeing me alone.’  Stephen’s heart beat furiously.  She felt suffocating with new hope, for what could be but good from Harold’s meeting with that sweet woman who had already brought so much comfort into her own life?  She was abashed, and yet radiant; she seemed to tread on air as she stood beside her friend saying farewell.  She did not wish to speak.  So the two women kissed and parted.
 
It had been arranged that two days hence the Stonehouse party were to spend the day at Lannoy, coming before lunch and staying the night, as they wanted in the afternoon to return a visit at some distance to the north of Lannoy.  Harold was to ride over with them.
 
When the Varilands party arrived, Stephen told them of Sister Ruth’s wish to see Harold.  Pearl at once proffered a request that she also should be taken at some other time to see the Silver Lady.  Harold acquiesced heartily; and it was agreed that some time in the late afternoon he should pay the visit.  Stephen would bring him.
 
Strangely enough, she felt no awkwardness, no trepidation, as they rode up the steep road to the Mill.
 
When the introduction had been effected, and half an hour had been consumed in conventional small talk, Stephen, obedience to a look from the Silver Lady, rose.  She said in they most natural way she could:
 
‘Now Sister Ruth, I will leave you two alone, if you do not mind............