Villagers always want to know.
The family fought shy of the questionings, and of course that was high testimony "if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn't they come out and prove it ?--why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking her up out of a steamboat explosion ?" Under this ceaseless persecution, Laura's morbid self-communing was renewed.

At night the day's contribution of detraction, innuendo and malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would drift into a course of thinking.

As her thoughts ran on, the indignant tears would spring to her eyes, and she would spit out fierce little ejaculations at intervals.

But finally she would grow calmer and say some comforting disdainful thing--something like this: "But who are they ?--Animals! What are their opinions to me?
Let them talk--I will not stoop to be affected by it.

I could hate----.
Nonsense--nobody I care for or in any way respect is changed toward me, I fancy." She may have supposed she was thinking of many individuals, but it was not so--she was thinking of only one.