She, too, was thinking of Ovid and Carmina.

Her memory was busy with the parting scene on the previous day.
The more she thought of all that had happened in that short space of time, the more bitterly she reproached herself.

Her one besetting weakness had openly degraded her, without so much as an attempt at resistance on her part.

The fear of betraying herself if she took leave of the man she secretly loved, in the presence of his family, had forced her to ask a favour of Carmina, and to ask it under circumstances which might have led her rival to suspect the truth.

Admitted to a private interview with Ovid, she had failed to control her agitation; and, worse still, in her ungovernable eagerness to produce a favourable impression on him at parting, she had promised--honestly promised, in that moment of impulse--to make Carmina's happiness her own peculiar care! Carmina, who had destroyed in a day the hope of years! Carmina, who had taken him away from her; who had clung round him when he ran upstairs, and had kissed him--fervently, shamelessly kissed him--before the servants in the hall! She started to her feet, roused to a frenzy of rage by her own recollections.