Agatha wanted to be understood and not to be chaffed.

Finding herself unable to satisfy both these conditions, she resolved to do without sympathy and to hold her tongue.

She had often had to do so before, and she was helped on this occasion by a sense of the ridiculous appearance her passion might wear in the vulgar eye.

Her secret kept itself, as she was supposed in the college to be insensible to the softer emotions.

Love wrought no external change upon her.