Joyce had to come to a resolution at which she herself wondered, in forlorn helplessness, as if some other being within her had decided upon it and not she. That she, all shy, shrinking, reticent as she was, with the limitations of her peasant pride and incapacity for self-revelation, should attach a last desperate hope to the possibility of enlightenment from some one else’s judgment, was wonderful to herself. For how could she lay that tangled question before any one, or unfold her soul? how could any stranger know what her perplexity was, between the claims of the old tranquil yet enthusiastic affections of her youth, and the strange unconfessed dream of absorbing feeling which had swept her soul of late—between the pledges of her tender ignorance, and the fulfilments of a life to which fuller knowledge had come? She did not herself understand how she had come to stand at this terrible turning-point, or why she should thus be summoned to decide not only her own fate, but that of others; and how could she explain it to strangers who knew nothing, neither how she was bound, nor wherein she was free? And yet there came a longing over her which could not be silenced—to ask some one—to make a tribunal for herself, and plead her cause before it, and hear what the oracle would say. Perhaps it was because all her lights had failed her, and all her faculties contradicted each other, that this despairing thought suggested itself—to discover an oracle, and to find out what it would say.
Of whom could she ask, and who could fill this place to her? Not her father. Joyce did not say to herself that the good Colonel was not a wise man, though he was so kind. Had he been the wisest of men, she would have shrunk from placing her heart unveiled in his hand. For to the father everything must be said. He is no oracle; he is a sovereign judge: that was not the help her case required. Her step-mother was more impossible still. If
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 not to him, still less to her, could the girl, so cruelly wounded, so torn in divers directions, lay open her misery and difficulty. Not to any one could she lay them open. It was an oracle she wanted—something to which a half-revelation, an enigmatical confession would suffice—who would understand before anything was spoken, and give a deliverance which, perhaps, would be capable of various interpretations, which should not approach too closely to the facts. This was what she wanted without knowing what she wanted, with only a strong longing to have light—light such as was not in her own troubled self-questionings and thoughts.
Joyce had not many friends among the people who surrounded Mrs. Hayward with a flutter of society and social obligations. Indeed Mrs. Hayward herself had not many friends, and it is doubtful whether she would have found one to whose judgment she could resort for advice, as Joyce meant to do. But, the girl was perhaps more discriminating by a natural instinct as to who was to be trusted—perhaps in her far higher ideality more trustful. At all events, there were two very different persons to whom, after much tossing about on the dark sea of her distress, her thoughts turned. A little light might come from them; she might unfold herself to them partially, fancifully, leaving them to guess the word of the enigma, finding some comfort in what they said, even if it should fall wide of the mark. When Mrs. Hayward set out to pay her visits in the afternoon, Joyce stole forth almost furtively, though all the world might have seen her going upon her innocent search after wisdom; but the world, even as represented in a comparatively innocent suburban place, would have been at once startled and amused to note at what shrine it was that Joyce sought wisdom and the teaching of the oracle. She went not to any of the notable people, not to the clergy, or even to Mrs. Sitwell, who was supposed to be her friend, and who was known to be so clever. Joyce did not at all know that the parson’s wife had played her false, and she had seen more of that lady than of any one else in the place. But this was not because of any innate sympathy, but because of the pertinacity with which Mrs. Sitwell had seized upon Joyce as a useful auxiliary in the carrying out of her own ends—and the girl’s instinct rejected that artificial bond, and put no faith in the cleverness which she acknowledged, nor even in the goodness after its kind, which Joyce’s mind was large enough to acknowledge too. She went not to Mrs. Sitwell, nor to the parson, Mrs. Sitwell’s husband, but she threaded through many lanes and devious ways until she came to a door in a wall with a little bright brass knocker, and a grating, and great thorny branches
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 of a bare rose-tree straggling over. Within was a small neat green garden, and a little house looking out upon it with shining windows. And within that, coming hastily to the door to meet her, was Miss Marsham, whom everybody knew to be as good as gold, but nobody imagined to be wise or instructive in any way. Joyce had come to find her oracle here.
The room was small and low, full of old china, old pictures, a little collection of relics, in the midst of which their gentle mistress, a mild spirit clad with only as much body as was strictly essential, and with an old gown constructed on the same principles, with just as much old and somewhat faded silk as was strictly necessary, appeared in perfect harmony, the soul of the little dainty place. She received Joyce with the tenderest welcome, in which there was something more than her usual kindness, and an anxiety which Joyce, full of her own thoughts, never perceived. Miss Marsham was ready and prepared to be confided in. She was prepared for the story of Joyce’s youth, for the revelation of her peasant parents, and how for their good she had sacrificed herself to Colonel Hayward’s fancy—ready to understand at half a word, to condone and to condole, to give praise for the noble motive, the self-sacrifice, and only gently—very gently—to touch upon the deception, which the severest critic could not consider to be Joyce’s fault. She kissed her and said, ‘My dear child, my poor Joyce,’ with a tender pity which forestalled every explanation. Did she then already know Joyce’s trouble and sore perplexity? but how was it possible that she should know?
‘You must not think I have come just to call,’ Joyce said.
‘No, dear? but why shouldn’t you come just to call? There will never, never be any circumstances in which I shall not be glad to have you come. My dear, circumstances don’t matter at all to me when I know any one as I know you!’
Joyce was a little bewildered by this effusion. She said, with a faint smile, ‘And yet you don’t know me well. I have been here just five months, and part of that away——’
‘My love, when you understand a person and love a person, as I do you, the time does not count by months.’
‘That is what I feel: and I have nobody—nobody to look to:—you will say my father, Miss Marsham. He is kind, kind—but oh, I have not been brought up with him nor used to open my heart,—and in some things he knows only one language and me another—and besides, if I were to tell him everything, he would say what I was to do, and I would have to obey. And Mrs. Hayward with
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 him, they would settle it all,—and I am not used to it, and I cannot——’
‘No, Joyce, I understand—it is they who have led you into it—you can’t ask advice from them.’
‘They did not lead me into it,’ said Joyce. ‘It was just nature led me into it, and the perversity of things. Will you ever have noticed in your life how things go wrong? Nobody means any harm, and all you do is innocent; and even if you were very prudent and weighed everything beforehand, there would not be one step that you could say afterwards—This was wrong. And yet things all turn wrong, and your heart is broken, and nothing is to blame.’
‘Oh, Joyce, words cannot say how sorry I am! There was one thing perhaps, my dear, a little wrong—for to deceive in any way, even if it seems to do no harm and is with the best motive—the highest motive, to help those you love——’
Joyce sighed softly to herself, no longer asking how Miss Marsham could know, then shook her head. ‘I wish it had been for that motive; but there was no love, no love,—I,’ with a sudden blush, ‘did not know what love meant.’
Miss Marsham looked up with an exclamation of astonishment on her lips, but stopped with her mouth open, wondering. Joyce, whose eyes were cast down, did no............