I might have been something more, I might have been a happy woman, if I could have prevailed on myself to speak to Julian Gray." "What hindered you from speaking to him ?" "I was afraid." "Afraid of what ?" "Afraid of making my hard life harder still." A woman who could have sympathized with her would perhaps have guessed what those words meant.

Grace was simply embarrassed by her; and Grace failed to guess.
"I don't understand you," she said.
There was no alternative for Mercy but to own the truth in plain words.
She sighed, and said the words.

"I was afraid I might interest him in my sorrows, and might set my heart on him in return." The utter absence of any fellow-feeling with her on Grace's side expressed itself unconsciously in the plainest terms.
"You!" she exclaimed, in a tone of blank astonishment.
The nurse rose slowly to her feet.

Grace's expression of surprise told her plainly--almost brutally--that her confession had gone far enough.
"I astonish you ?" she said.

"Ah, my young lady, you don't know what rough usage a woman's heart can bear, and still beat truly! Before I saw Julian Gray I only knew men as objects of horror to me.