The next day, which was Sunday, a telegram came for me, which I decided,
without opening it, to be the announcement of the end. But it proved to
be a message from Mrs. Bentley, begging in most urgent terms that Mrs.
March and I would come to her at once, if possible. These terms left the
widest latitude for surmise, but none for choice, in the sad
circumstances, and we looked up the Sunday trains for Gormanville, and
went.

We found the poor woman piteously grateful, but by no means so
prostrated as we had expected. She was rather, as often happens, stayed
and held upright by the burden that had been laid upon her, and it was
with fortitude if not dignity that she appealed to us for our counsel,
and if possible our help, in a matter about which she had already
consulted the doctor. "The doctor says that the excitement cannot hurt
Edith; it may even help her, to propose it. I should like to do it, but
if you do not think well of it, I will not do it. I know it is too late
now to make up to her for the past," said Mrs. Bentley, and here she
gave way to the grief she had restrained hitherto.

"There is no one else," she went on, "who has been so intimately
acquainted with the facts of my daughter's engagement--no one else that
I can confide in or appeal to."

We both murmured that she was very good; but she put our politeness
somewhat peremptorily aside.

"It is the only thing I can do now, and it is useless to do that now. It
will be no reparation for the past, and it will be for myself and not
for her, as all that I have done in the past has been; but I wish to