It had been bitter indeed while it had lasted, and some of the bitterness returned upon her now.

But she would not again need to force the tears back, pressing her hands upon her eyes with desperate strength as she had done.

It was useless to cry over what could not be helped, and since she had made the great mistake of her life she must keep her word or lose her good name for ever, according to the ideas in which she had been brought up.

But it would be very hard to meet San Miniato now, within the next quarter of an hour, as she inevitably must.

Less hard, perhaps, than if she had convicted him of falsehood in the matter of the telegram, as she had fully expected that she could--but painful enough, heaven knew.
There was an old trace of oriental fatalism in her nature, passed down to her, perhaps, from some Saracen ancestor in the unknown genealogy of her family.