An hour elapsed, and at length the sound was heard.  Convinced that Pauncefort had now quitted her mother for the night, Venetia ventured forth, and stopping before the door of her mother’s room, she knocked gently.  There was no reply, and in a few minutes Venetia knocked again, and rather louder.  Still no answer.  ‘Mamma,’ said Venetia, in a faltering tone, but no sound replied.  Venetia then tried the door, and found it fastened.  Then she gave up the effort in despair, and retreating to her own chamber, she threw herself on her bed, and wept bitterly.

Some time elapsed before she looked up again; the candles were flaring in their sockets.  It was a wild windy night; Venetia rose, and withdrew the curtain of her window.  The black clouds were scudding along the sky, revealing, in their occasional but transient rifts, some glimpses of the moon, that seemed unusually bright, or of a star that trembled with supernatural brilliancy.  She stood a while gazing on the outward scene that harmonised with her own internal agitation:  her grief was like the storm, her love like the light of that bright moon and star.  There came over her a desire to see her mother, which she felt irresistible; she was resolved that no difficulty, no impediment, should prevent her instantly from throwing herself on her bosom.  It seemed to her that her brain would burn, that this awful night could never end without such an interview.  She opened her door, went forth again into the vestibule, and approached with a nervous but desperate step her mother’s chamber.  To her astonishment the door was ajar, but there was a light within.  With trembling step and downcast eyes, Venetia entered the chamber, scarcely daring to advance, or to look up.

‘Mother,’ she said, but no one answered; she heard the tick of the clock; it was the only sound.  ‘Mother,’ she repeated, and she dared to look up, but the bed was empty.  There was no mother.  Lady Annabel was not in the room.  Following an irresistible impulse, Venetia knelt by the side of her mother’s bed and prayed.  She addressed, in audible and agitated tones, that Almighty and Beneficent Being of whom she was so faithful and pure a follower.  With sanctified simplicity, she communicated to her Creator and her Saviour all her distress, all her sorrow, all the agony of her perplexed and wounded spirit.  If she had sinned, she prayed for forgiveness, and declared in solitude, to One whom she could not deceive, how unintentional was the trespass; if she were only misapprehended, she supplicated for comfort and consolation, for support under the heaviest visitation she had yet experienced, the displeasure of that earthly parent whom she revered only second to her heavenly Father.

‘For thou art my Father,’ said Venetia, ’I have no other father but thee, O God!  Forgive me, then, my heavenly parent, if in my wilfulness, if in my thoughtless and sinful blindness, I have sighed for a father on earth, as well as in heaven!  Great have thy mercies been to me, O God! in a mother’s love.  Turn, then, again to me the heart of that mother whom I have offended!  Let her look upon her child as before; let her continue to me a double parent, and let me pay to her the duty and the devotion that might otherwise have been divided!’