The Rivals Lady Ongar sat alone, long into the night, when Harry Clavering had left her.

She sat there long, getting up occasionally from her seat, once or twice attempting to write at her desk, looking now and then at a paper or two, and then at a small picture which she had, but passing the long hours in thinking--in long, sad, solitary thoughts.

What should she do with herself--with herself, her title, and her money?
Would it be still well that she should do something, that she should make some attempt; or should she, in truth, abandon all, as the arch-traitor did, and acknowledge that for her foot there could no longer be a resting-place on the earth?
At six-and-twenty, with youth, beauty and wealth at her command, must she despair?
But her youth had been stained, her beauty had lost its freshness, and as for her wealth, had she not stolen it?
Did not the weight of the theft sit so heavy on her, that her brightest thought was one which prompted her to abandon it?
As to that idea of giving up her income and her house, and calling herself again Julia Brabazon, though there was something in the poetry of it which would now and again for half an hour relieve her, yet she hardly proposed such a course to herself as a reality.

The world in which she had lived had taught her to laugh at romance, to laugh at it even while she liked its beauty; and she would tell herself that for such a one as her to do such a thing as this, would be to insure for herself the ridicule of all who knew her name.

What would Sir Hugh say, and her sister?
What Count Pateroff and the faithful Sophie?
What all the Ongar tribe, who would reap the rich harvest of her insanity?
These latter would offer to provide her a place in some convenient asylum, and the others would all agree that such would be her fitting destiny.