How incredible that she should have attracted him!--how, impossible that she should continue to attract him! All Lucy's immaturities and defects passed through Eleanor's analysing thought.
For a moment she saw her coldly, odiously, as an enemy might see her.
And then!--quick revulsion--a sudden loathing of herself--a sudden terror of these new meannesses and bitterness that were invading her, stealing from her her very self, robbing her of the character that unconsciously she had loved in herself, as other people loved it--knowing that in deed and truth she was what others thought her to be, kind, and gentle, and sweet-natured.
And last of all--poor soul!--an abject tenderness and repentance towards Lucy, which yet brought no relief, because it never affected for an instant the fierce tension of will beneath.
A silvery night stole upon the sunset, absorbed, transmuted all the golds and crimsons of the west into its own dimly shining blue.
Eleanor was in bed; Lucy's clever hands had worked wonders with her room; and now Eleanor had been giving quick remorseful directions to Marie to concern herself a little with Miss Foster's comfort and Miss Foster's luggage.
Lucy escaped from the rooms littered with trunks and clothes.

She took her hat and a light cape, and stole out into the broad passage, on either side of which opened the long series of small rooms which had once been Carmelite cells.

Only the four or five rooms at the western end, the bare 'apartment' which they occupied, were still whole and water-tight.

Half-way down the passage, as Lucy had already discovered, you came to rooms where the windows had no glass and the plaster had dropped from the walls, and the ceilings hung down in great gaps and rags of ruin.

There was a bay window at the eastern end of the passage, which had been lately glazed for the summer tenants' sake.