But for the feminine softness to which her nature had given way for the first time, since the power of love had mastered her, there was no thing of earth could have happened to her which would have brought this rolling ball to her throat, this tremor to her body--since the hour of her birth she had never been attacked by such a female folly, as she would indeed have regarded it once; but now 'twas different--for a while she had been a woman--a woman who had flung herself upon the bosom of him who was her soul's lord, and resting there, her old rigid strength had been relaxed.
But 'twas not this woman who had known tender yielding who returned to take her place in the Panelled Parlour, knowing of the companion who waited near her unseen--for it was as her companion she thought of him, as she had thought of him when he followed her in the Mall, forced himself into her box at the play, or stood by her shoulder at assemblies; he had placed himself by her side again, and would stay there until she could rid herself of him.
"After to-night he will be gone, if I act well my part," she said, "and then may I live a freed woman." 'Twas always upon the divan she took her place when she received her visitors, who were accustomed to finding her enthroned there.

This afternoon when she came into the room she paused for a space, and stood beside it, the parlour being yet empty.

She felt her face grow a little cold, as if it paled, and her under-lip drew itself tight across her teeth.
"In a graveyard," she said, "I have sat upon the stone ledge of a tomb, and beneath there was--worse than this, could I but have seen it.

This is no more." When the Sir Humphreys and Lord Charleses, Lady Bettys and Mistress Lovelys were announced in flocks, fluttering and chattering, she rose from her old place to meet them, and was brilliant graciousness itself.
She hearkened to their gossipings, and though 'twas not her way to join in them, she was this day witty in such way as robbed them of the dulness in which sometimes gossip ends.

It was a varied company which gathered about her; but to each she gave his or her moment, and in that moment said that which they would afterwards remember.