In our garret she was to meet another will, stronger and infinitely
better controlled than her own, and I did not know how it would all
turn out.
_CHAPTER XII_
_Atonement_
I had not been long in the room when a knock at the door announced the
girls. I admitted them, and Mary walked to the middle of the floor. It
was just growing dark and the room was quite dim, save at the window
where Brandon sat reading. Gods! those were exciting moments; my heart
beat like a woman's. Brandon saw the girls when they entered, but
never so much as looked up from his book. You must remember he had a
great grievance. Even looking at it from Mary's side of the case,
certainly its best point of view, he had been terribly misused, and it
was all the worse that the misuse had come from one who, from his
standpoint, had _pretended_ to love him, and had wantonly led him on,
as he had the best of right to think, to love her, and to suffer the
keenest pangs a heart can know. Then you must remember he did not know
even the best side of the matter, bad as it was, but saw only the
naked fact, that in recompense for his great help in time of need,
Mary had deliberately allowed him to lie in that dungeon a long,
miserable month, and would have suffered him to die.
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