She was gone before they could say another word, leaving them looking at each other in consternation, not knowing what to think.
For the rest of the night Mrs. Blencarrow shut herself up in her own room; she would not come downstairs, not even to dinner. The boys arrived and sought their mother in the drawing-room, wondering that she did not come to meet them, but found only their uncles there, standing before the fire like two baffled conspirators. Reginald and Bertie rushed to their
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 mother’s room, and plunged into it, notwithstanding her maid’s exhortation to be quiet.
‘Your mamma has got a bad headache, sir.’
They were not accustomed to any régime of headaches. They burst in and found her seated in her dressing-gown over the fire.
‘Is your head so bad? Are you going to stay out?’ said Reginald, who had just learnt the slang of Eton.
‘And there’s Uncle Rex and Uncle Roger downstairs,’ said Bertie.
‘You must tell them I am not well enough to come down. You must take the head of the table and take care of them instead of me,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow.
‘But what is the matter, mamma?’ said Bertie. ‘You do not look very bad,
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 though you are red here.’ He touched his own cheeks under his eyes, which were shining with the cold and excitement of arriving.
‘Never mind, my dear. Emmy and you must do the honours of the house. I am not well enough to come downstairs. Had you good sport?’
‘Oh, very good one day; but then, mamma, you know this horrid frost—— ’
‘Yes, yes. I should not wonder if the ice on the pond would bear to-morrow,’ she said with a smile. ‘Now run away, dear boys, and see that your uncles have everything they want; for I can’t bear much talking, you know, with my bad head.’
‘Poor mamma!’ they cried. Reginald felt her forehead with his cold hand, as he had seen her do, and Bertie hugged her in a somewhat rude embrace. She kissed
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 both the glowing faces, bright with cold and fun and superabundant life. When they were gone, noisily, yet with sudden starts of recollection that they ought to be quiet, Mrs. Blencarrow got up from her chair and began to walk hurriedly about the room, now and then wringing her hands.
‘Even my little boys!’ she said to herself, with the acutest tone of anguish. ‘Even my little boys!’
For she had no headache, no weakness. Her brain was supernaturally clear, seeing everything on every side of the question. She was before a problem which it needed more than mortal power to solve. To do all her duties was impossible; which was she to fulfil and which abandon? It was not a small contradiction such as sometimes confuses a brain, but one that was
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 fundamental, striking at the very source of life. She was not angry with her brothers, or with the others who had made this assault upon her. What were they, after all? Had they never spoken a word, the problem would still have been there, more and more difficult to solve every day.
No one disturbed her further that night; she sent word downstairs that she was going to bed, and sent even her maid away, darkening the light. But when all was still, she rose again, and, bringing out a box full of papers, began to examine and read them, burning many—a piece of work which occupied her till the household noises had all sunk into silence, and the chill of midnight was within and around the great house full of human creatures asleep. Mrs. Blencarrow had all the restlessness about her of great mental
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 trouble. After she had sat long over her papers, she thrust them from her hastily, throwing some into the fire and some into the box, which she locked with a sort of fierce energy; then rose and moved about the room, pausing to look at herself, with her feverish cheeks, in the great mirror, then throwing herself on her knees by her bedside as if to pray, then rising with a despairing movement as if that was impossible. Sometimes she murmured to herself with a low, unconscious outcry like some wounded animal—sometimes relieved herself by broken words. Her restlessness, her wretchedness, all seemed to breathe that question—the involuntary cry of humanity—‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ At length she opened her door softly and stole downstairs. There was moonlight outside, and stray
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 rays from a window here and there made the long corridors and stairs faintly visible. One broad sweep of whiteness from a great window on the staircase crossed the dark like a vast ribbon, and across this ghostly light her figure appeared and passed, more strangely and in a more awful revelation than had all been dark. Had anyone seen her, it would have been impossible to take her for anything but a ghost.
She went down to the hall, then noiselessly along the further passage and bare stone stairs to the little business room. All was dark and silent there, the moonlight coming in through the chinks of the closed shutters. Mrs. Blencarrow stood on the threshold a moment as if she had expected to find someone there, then went in and sat down a few minutes in
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 the dark. Her movements and her sudden pauses were alike full of the carelessness of distracted action. In the solitude and midnight darkness and silence, what could her troubled thoughts be meditating? Suddenly she moved again unseen, and came out to the door by which tenants and other applicants came for business or charity. She turned the key softly, and, opening it, stood upon the threshold. The opening from the darkness into the white world unseen was like a chill and startling transformation; the white light streamed in, opening a narrow pathway in the darkness, in the midst of which she stood, a ghost indeed—enough to have curdled the blood of any spectator. She stood for another moment between the white world without and the blackness of night and sleep within. To steal away
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 and be lost for ever in that white still distance; to disappear and let the billows of light and space and silence swallow her up, and be seen no more. Ah! but that was not possible. The only thing possible to mortal power was a weary plodding along a weary road, that led not to vague distances, but to some village or town well known, where the fugitive would be discovered by the daylight, by wondering wayfarers, by life which no one can escape. Even should death overtake her, and the welcome chill extinguish existence, yet still there would be found somewhere, like a fallen image, her empty shell, her mortal garment lying in the way of the first passenger. No; oh no; rather still the struggle, the contradictions, the despair——
And how could she ask God to help
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 her?—that one appeal which is instinctive: for there was nothing she could do that would not be full of lies or of treachery, a shirking of one duty or another, the abandonment of justice, truth, and love. She turned from the world outside and closed the door; then returned again up the long stairs, and crossed once more the broad belt of moonlight from the window in the staircase. It was like resigning all hope of outside help, turning back to the struggle that had to be fought out inch by inch on the well-known and common ground. She was chilled to the heart with the icy air of the night, and threw herself down on the hearthrug before the fire, with a forlorn longing for warmth, which is the last physical craving of all wounded and suffering things; and then she fell into a deep but broken sleep,
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 from which she fortunately picked herself up before daylight, so as to prevent any revelation of her agitated state to the maid, who naturally suspected much, but knew, thanks to Mrs. Blencarrow’s miraculous self-command, scarcely anything at all.
She did not get up next morning till the brothers, infinitely perplexed and troubled, believing their sister to be mortally offended by the step they had taken, and by their adoption or partial adoption of the rumours of the neighbourhood, had gone away. They made an ineffectual attempt to see her before they left, and finally departed, sending her a note, in which Roger d’Eyncourt expressed the deep sorrow of both, and their hope that she would come in time to forgive them, and to see that only solici
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tude for herself and her family could have induced them to take such a step.
‘I hope,’ he added, ‘my dear sister, that you will not misunderstand our motives when I say that we are bound in honour to contradict upon authoritative grounds this abominable rumour, since our own character may be called in question, for permitting you to retain the guardianship of the children in such circumstances. As you refuse to discuss it with us (and I understand the natural offence to your pride and modesty that seems involved), we must secure ourselves by examining the books in which the record of the marriage was said to have been found.’
Mrs. Blencarrow received this note while still in bed. She read it with great apparent calm, but the great bed in
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 which she lay quivered suddenly, all its heavy satin draperies moving as if an earthquake had moved the room. Both her maid and Emmy saw this strange movement with alarmed surprise, thinking that one of the dogs had got in, or that there had been some sinking of the foundation.
‘The bed shook,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow, clutching with her hand at the quilt, as if for safety. ‘Yes, I felt something; but the flooring is not very even, and worm-eaten at some places, you know.’
She got up immediately after, making a pretence of this to account for her recovery so soon after her brothers’ departure, and appeared soon afterwards downstairs, looking very pale and exhausted, but saying she felt a little better. And the day passed as usual—quite as
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 usual to the boys and the servants; a cheerful day enough, the children in the foreground, and a good deal of holiday noise and commotion going on. Emmy from time to time looked wistfully at her mother, but Mrs. Blencarrow took no notice, save with a kiss or an especially tender word.
‘I think you have got my headache, Emmy.’
‘Oh, mamma, I don’t mind if I can take it from you.’
The mother shook her head with a smile that went to Emmy’s heart.
‘I am afraid,’ she said, ‘no one can do that.’
In the afternoon she sent a man over to the Vicarage, with a note to the clergyman of the parish. He was a middle-aged man, but unmarried; a studious and
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 quiet parson, little in society, though regarded with great respect in the neighbourhood; a man safe to confide in, with neither wife nor other belongings to tempt him to the betrayal of a secret entrusted to him. Perhaps this was why, in her uttermost need, Mrs. Blencarrow bethought herself of Mr. Germaine. She passed the rest of the day in the usual manner, not going out, establishing herself behind the screen by the drawing-room fire with some work, ready to be appealed to by the children. It was the time at which she expected visits, but there had been no caller at Blencarrow for a day or two, which was also a noticeable thing, for the neighbourhood was what is called sociable, and there had been rarely a day in which some country neighbour or other did not appear, until the last week, during
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 which scarcely any stranger had crossed the threshold. Was it the weather which had become so cold? Was it that there were Christmas parties in most of the houses, which perhaps had not quite broken up yet? Was it——? It was a small matter, and Mrs. Blencarrow was thankful beyond expression to be rid of them, to be free of the necessity for company looks and company talks—but yet——
In the evening, after dinner, when the children were all settled to a noisy round game, she went downstairs to her business room, bidding them good-night before she left, and requesting that she should not be disturbed, for her headaches lately had made her much behind with her work, which, of course, was unusually heavy at the beginning of the year. She went
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 away with a curious stillness about her, pausing at the door to give a last look at the happy little party, all flushed with their game. It might have been the last look she should ever have of them, from the expression in her face; and then she closed the door and went resolutely away. The servants in their regions below sounded almost as merry as the children, in the after-dinner ease; but they were far from the business-room, which was perfectly quiet and empty—a shaded lamp burning in it, the fire blazing. Mrs. Blencarrow sat down at her writing-table, but, though she was so busy, did nothing. She looked at her watch with a weary sigh, then leaning her head on her hands, waited—for whom and for what, who could say?