She was too young and girlish to understand that her eyes had been opened upon the workings of the human heart.

She had seen two sights which neither man nor woman can ever forget, love and love's counterfeit presentment, and both were stamped indelibly upon the unspotted page of her maiden memory.
She had seen a man whom she had hitherto liked, and whom she had unconsciously respected for a certain dignity he seemed to have, degrade himself--and for money's sake, as she rightly judged--to the playing of a pitiful comedy.

As the whole scene came back to her in all distinctness, she traced the deception from first to last with amazing certainty of comprehension, and she knew that San Miniato had wilfully and intentionally laid a plot to work upon her feelings and to produce the result he had obtained--a poor result enough, if he had known the whole truth, yet one of which Beatrice was sorely ashamed.

She had been deceived into the expression of something which she had never felt--and which, this morning, seemed further from her than ever before.

It was bitter to think that any man could say she had uttered those three words "I love you," when there was less truth in them than in the commonest, most pardonable social lie.