as things mortal can be. She would go to Coniston unless she perished on
the way. No loving entreaties, no fears of Mrs. Merrill or her daughters,
were of any avail. Mrs. Merrill too, was awed by the vastness of the
girl's sorrow, and wondered if her own nature were small by comparison.
She had wept, to be sure, at her husband's confession, and lain awake
over it in the night watches, and thought of the early days of their
marriage.

And then, Mrs. Merrill told herself, Cynthia would have to talk with Mr.
Merrill. How was he to come unscathed out of that? There was pain and
bitterness in that thought, and almost resentment against Cynthia,
quivering though she was with sympathy for the girl. For Mrs. Merrill,
though the canker remained, had already pardoned her husband and had
asked the forgiveness of God for that pardon. On other occasions, in
other crisis, she had waited and watched for him in the parlor window,
and to-night she was at the door before his key was in the lock, while he
was still stamping the snow from his boots. She drew him into the room
and told him what had happened.

"Oh, Stephen," she cried, "what are you going to say to her?"

What, indeed? His wife had sorrowed, but she had known the obstacles and
perils by which he had been beset. But what was he to say to Cynthia? Her
very name had grown upon him, middle-aged man of affairs though he was,
until the thought of it summoned up in his mind a figure of purity, and
of the strength which was from purity. He would not have believed it
possible that the country girl whom they had taken into their house three
months before should have wrought such an influence over them all.

Even in the first hour of her sorrow which she had spent that afternoon