Yes, she's been at it again! Now fetch the Bordeaux, little one." The following days were cycles of torture to Alice.

She groveled in the shadow of a great dread.

It seemed to her that Beverley could not love her, could not help looking upon her as a poor, wild, foolish girl, unworthy of consideration.

She magnified her faults and crudities, she paraded before her inner vision her fecent improprieties, as they had been disclosed to her, until she saw herself a sort of monstrosity at which all mankind was gazing with disgust.

Life seemed dry and shriveled, a mere jaundiced shadow, while her love for Beverley took on a new growth, luxuriant, all-embracing, uncontrollable.