She could not do it; and what she feared most, soon happened.

Lucia came, in some way, to be aware of what was going on, and this last pain, though so much lighter than those she had already borne, seemed to break down all her pride at once.

In her own room that night she sat, hour after hour, in forlorn wretchedness--her own familiar friends, the companions of her whole life, were making her misery the subject of their careless gossip.

They knew nothing of the real wound which she had suffered, but they were quite ready to inflict another; and the feeling of loneliness and desertion which filled her heart at the thought was more bitter than all that had gone before.

She remembered Maurice, and wondered drearily whether he too would have misjudged her; but for the moment even her faith in him was shaken, and she turned from her thoughts of him without comfort.
But this mood was too unnatural to last long.