I will _not_ tell her! I will _never_ tell _any one_.

I, that have hitherto bungled and blundered over the whitest fib, will wade knee-deep in falsehoods, before I will ever let any one guess the disgrace that has happened to me.

Oh that, by long silence, I could wipe it out of my own heart--out of the book of unerasable past deeds! Of course, by the cessation of his visits, Barbara will learn her fate in time.

_In time._ Yes! but till then--till the long weeks in their lapse have brought the certainty of disappointment and mistake?
How can I--myself knowing--watch her gentle confidence (for latterly her doubts--and whose would not ?--have been set at rest) decline through all the suffering stages of uneasy expectation and deferred hope, to the blank, dull sickness of despair?
How, without betraying myself, see her daily with wistful eyes looking--with strained ears listening--for a face and a step that come not?
If she were one to love lightly, one of the many women who, when satisfied that it is no longer any use to cry and strive for the unattainable, the out of reach, clip and pare their affections to fit the unattainable, the within reach--! But I know differently.
Hitherto, whenever love has been offered to her--and the occasions have been not few--she has put it away from her; most gently, indeed, with a most eager desire to pour balm and not vinegar into the wounds she has made; with a most sincere sorrow and a disproportioned remorse at being obliged to cause pain to any living thing; yet, with a quiet and indifferent firmness, that left small ground for lingering hopes.

And now, having once loved, she will be slow to unlove again.
It is quite dark now--as dark, at least, as it will be all night--and two or three stars are beginning to quiver out, small and cold, in the infinite distances of the sky.