And above all, she had certain jealous intimations that the man was false and the deception double.

True, she falsely trifled with his love; but he, perhaps, was only trifling with her vanity.

The insolence of his late mimicry, and the odium of her own position as she sat and watched it, lay besides like a load upon her conscience.

She met Otto almost with a sense of guilt, and yet she welcomed him as a deliverer from ugly things.
But the wheels of an interview are at the mercy of a thousand ruts; and even at Otto's entrance, the first jolt occurred.

Gondremark, he saw, was gone; but there was the chair drawn close for consultation; and it pained him not only that this man had been received, but that he should depart with such an air of secrecy.