"We have, it seems, no right to be proud." A rush of pain and bitterness filled her heart--pain, new-born and insistent, for her mother, her father, and herself.

Ever since Aldous Raeburn's hesitating revelations, she had been liable to this sudden invasion of a hot and shamed misery.

And to-night, after her talk with her mother, it could not but overtake her afresh.
But her strong personality, her passionate sense of a moral independence not to be undone by the acts of another, even a father, made her soon impatient of her own distress, and she flung it from her with decision.
"No, we have no right to be proud," she repeated to herself.

"It must be all true what Mr.Raeburn said--probably a great deal more.

Poor, poor mamma! But, all the same, there is nothing to be got out of empty quarrelling and standing alone.