It seemed to her now that she had only softened towards his memory because she had believed that he had left her money--and now, when she saw that he had treated her contemptuously, she found him once again the cruel, mean figure that she had before thought him.
For that she most bitterly, with an intensity that only her loneliness could have given her, despised herself.

And yet something else in her knew that that reproach was not a true one.

She had really softened towards him only because she had felt that she had behaved badly towards him, and the discovery now that he had behaved badly towards her did not alter her own original behaviour.

She did not analyse all this; she only knew that there were in her longings for affection, a desire to be loved, an aching for companionship, and that these things must always be kept down, fast hidden within her.

She realised her loneliness now with a fierce, proud, almost exultant independence.