Besides, it would be neither courteous nor reasonable to break with Mrs.Falchion abruptly.

The error was mine, not hers.

She had not my knowledge of the immediate circumstances, which made my position morally untenable.

She showed unembarrassed ignorance of the change.

At the same time I caught a tone of voice and a manner which showed she was not actually oblivious, but was touched in that nerve called vanity; and from this much feminine hatred springs.
I made up my mind to begin a course of scientific reading, and was seated in my cabin, vainly trying to digest a treatise on the pathology of the nervous system, when Hungerford appeared at the door.