It was sorrowful, pitiful, to be lamented, wept for, aye, and groaned for; many inward groans it cost her; but it was at any rate well that she could attribute her sorrow to the spite of circumstances rather than to the ill-conduct of those she loved.
Nor would it have been fair to blame Gertrude in the matter.
While she was yet a child, this friend of her mother's had been thrown with her, and when she was little more than a child, she found that this friend had become a lover.

She liked him, in one sense loved him, and was accustomed to regard him as one whom it would be almost wrong in her not to like and love.

What wonder then that when he first spoke to her warm words of adoration, she had not been able at once to know her own heart, and tell him that his hopes would be in vain?
She perceived by instinct, rather than by spoken words, that her mother was favourable to this young lover, that if she accepted him she would please her mother, that the course of true love might in their case run smooth.

What wonder then that she should have hesitated before she found it necessary to say that she could not, would not, be Harry Norman's wife?
On the Saturday morning, the morning of that night which was, as he hoped, to see him go to bed a happy lover, so happy in his love as to be able to forget his other sorrows, she was sitting alone with her mother.

It was natural that their conversation should turn to Alaric and Harry.