Her sadness came upon her again when she had shut herself into her room and made ready for bed. She heard her father go upstairs, and the house became quite still. The clock of the church began to strike, and the clock on the stable turret chimed in on a fainter, quicker note. Before they had finished, the door of her room opened and startled her wildly. It was Beatrix, who came in, a figure all in white, and threw herself into her arms, and clung to her sobbing.
For a moment Caroline felt giddy with the shock of her surprise, and the fear of what was coming. But she rallied herself and murmuring soft words drew Beatrix to the bed and sat there holding her to her breast.
"I've been such an _awful_ beast to you, darling," Beatrix sobbed, "I had to come and ask you to forgive me. I couldn't sleep till I told you how much I love you."
The childish confession made Caroline inclined to laugh and cry at the same time, but brought with it such a sense of relief as was almost bliss to her troubled mind.
"I know you have wanted me to tell you everything," Beatrix went on, her sobs becoming less frequent, "and I've wanted to all the time. But something horrid in me kept it back, and I know I've hurt you frightfully, darling, and I shall never forgive myself for it as long as I live."
Caroline swept the hair from her forehead and kissed her lovingly, as her mother might have done. She felt immeasurably older than her sister, who seemed to her a little child again. "If you tell me now, my darling!" she said tenderly.
Beatrix sat up, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of Caroline's light dressing-gown. "Yes, I will. I want to," she said, in a pathetic voice. "It's only you I can tell everything to."
She bent her head and played with the ribbon that lay across Caroline's knee. "I know what you have thought," she said. "I didn't seem to be noticing, or to care, but I felt it all through me all the time. I couldn't be such a hard-hearted beast as not to mind what you were thinking, darling."
A few more tears and answering caresses, and she told her story, with her head on Caroline's shoulder, and Caroline's arm round her.
"I don't think I've behaved very well to Dick," she said. "I knew that he loved me very much, and yet I played with him. Perhaps I even led him on. But I didn't know how much he really did love me, or I wouldn't have done it. He's so strong and so deep; it was like playing with fire. Perhaps I didn't do anything very wrong till two days ago, for though I'd let him talk to me I hadn't given him any idea that I--that I wanted him to go any further. He has told me since that he would never have asked me to marry him unless I had said or done something to make him think that he could. I suppose I saw that it was like that. I felt, somehow, that he was trying to bend me to his will--no, not that, but there was something in him that _I_ couldn't move. And that vexed me. Oh, I was a beast! We went into the garden; I'd sent Bunting away so that I could show him I wanted to be alone with him. Then I led him on to tell me that he loved me; and at last he did. Then--oh, I hate myself for what I did."