return at night from any gathering, and there she found her sitting as
though she had dropped there in the corner of a great divan, her hands
hanging clasped before her on her knee, her head hanging forward on her
fallen chest, her large eyes staring into space.

"Clorinda! Clorinda!" Anne cried, running to her and kneeling at her
side. "Clorinda! God have mercy! What is't?"

Never before had her face worn such a look--'twas colourless, and so
drawn and fallen in that 'twas indeed almost as if all her great beauty
was gone; but the thing most awful to poor Anne was that all the new
softness seemed as if it had been stamped out, and the fierce hardness
had come back and was engraven in its place, mingled with a horrible
despair.

"An hour ago," she said, "I swooned. That is why I look thus. 'Tis yet
another sign that I am a woman--a woman!"

"You are ill--you swooned?" cried Anne. "I must send for your physician.
Have you not ordered that he be sent for yourself? If Osmonde were here,
how perturbed he would be!"

"Osmonde!" said my lady. "Gerald! Is there a Gerald, Anne?"

"Sister!" cried Anne, affrighted by her strange look--"oh, sister!"

"I have seen heaven," Clorinda said; "I have stood on the threshold and
seen through the part-opened gate--and then have been dragged back to
hell."