Nora went to her bedroom. It was a pleasant room; as it was then it was practically her own creation; it represented her ideal of what her sleeping chamber ought to be. She had even invested it with an air of romance, as girls, when they are at the most romantic period of their lives, sometimes will do. There are girls who regard their bedrooms as if they were parts of themselves. Nora was one of them; she regarded her bedroom as if it were part of herself.  
As she entered it that afternoon, it seemed to her that there was something strange about it, as if something had come into the atmosphere which was not present when she was in it last. It disturbed her, until she understood that the change was in her; that she had already unconsciously realized that this room, which had meant to her so many things, which she supposed would be hers for ever, might, probably, soon be hers no longer. With that feeling in her mind the room could never again be to her what it had been before; she felt almost as if she were a stranger in it then. Seating herself at her writing-table, she took the Bible which lay on the little shelf in front, and read in it, trying her hardest to concentrate her attention on its pages; but it was not easy, even the sacred words came to her through a mist. But when she closed the book, and went and knelt beside the bed, pillowing her face on the coverlet, as she had done again and again, times without number; alike in her infrequent moments of sorrow--she knew then what pigmy things those sorrows had been! and in her abounding hours of joy;--it was almost with a sense of terror that it was borne in upon her what great happiness she in truth had known--there came to her, as she continued to kneel, that peace which she so earnestly desired; so that she arose from prayer refreshed, and with that courage in her heart which refreshment brings. Placing herself on the armchair which stood by the open window, resting her arms on the sill, looking at the green world, perhaps without seeing how green and beautiful it was, so far as she could, she thought it all out.
 
And the more she thought the more clearly she apprehended that life for her--life as she hitherto had understood it--was at an end already, before it had scarcely begun, if the things which she had heard were true. She must depart from Cloverlea, and all that it stood for, and go out into a world, of which she knew nothing, to earn her own bread; she wondered, with an odd little smile, how she was going to set about it; if the picture was as black as it had just been painted. But was it? In her heart of hearts she doubted. Although she had been in such slight communion with her father; although his attitude towards her had been, in many respects, so unfatherlike; she believed that she had understood him, and that they had had much more in common than he had chosen to let it appear;--it would require a great deal to convince her that she was wrong.
 
She was fortified in her belief by a curious idea which, almost in spite of herself, obsessed her more and more; that she understood him better now that he was dead than she had done when he was living; that she was closer to him now than she had been then; that she saw more clearly into his very heart, and knew what manner of man he really was; and she knew that he was not the kind of man he must have been if the things which she had heard were true. He was incapable of falsehood; in small things, as in large, the soul of honour; he had not lied when he had told her that there would be enough for Robert as well as for her. Even then she had gathered more from what he said than his actual words; and she had understood that he had meant that she should gather more. She believed that he had wished her to know that in the future she would be a rich woman, and that his brief speech had been intended to convey that meaning; she was persuaded that he would not have meant it if it had not been true.
 
Yet, how was she to reconcile these things with the facts as they appeared at present? What explanation would make them harmonize? She did not know; she admitted to herself that she did not know; still she was convinced that, when everything was known, her father's truth would be established.
 
While Nora thought and thought; in the pretty bedchamber which had been assigned to her as an honoured guest, Elaine Harding was wrestling with troubles of her own, and her troubles were worse than Nora's. In her dressing-case, under a false bottom, were nearly three thousand pounds which did not belong to her; the dressing-case itself had been a gift from Nora, who had shown her the false bottom with glee, pointing out what a safe hiding-place it would be for any special treasures she might desire to keep from prying eyes. Almost the first use she had made of it had been to conceal the huge sum of which she had robbed the giver.
 
How she hated herself for what she had done! how gladly she would have restored the money to its place upon the dead man's table! She understood now what it had been doing there; doubtless it was the amount which it was his custom to pay into the bank each quarter, which it had been his intention to deliver on the morrow. God had intervened on the one hand, the devil on the other; she had played the devil's game;--fool! idiot! wretch that she had been! She realized quite clearly that that money would never bring any good to her; that it would lie like some obscene incubus on her whole life; even if she bought a husband with the proceeds of her stealing, how could she expect that such a marriage would be blest? The dressing-case itself had become a sort of monomania; not only did she keep it locked, but she hid it in her trunk and kept that locked; even then she was continually haunted by fears that some one was taking libe............