While Tim's laugh yet resounded he walked away unnoticed, and taking a roundabout course gained his room.

There he remained a week, hardly coming down to his meals.

It was a terrible week for him, for every waking hour of it he walked through the valley of humiliation, and drank the bitter waters of shame.

The joints of his hitherto impenetrable armor of self-conceit had been so pierced by the fine rapier thrusts of Rachel's scorn that it fell from him under the coarse pounding of the village loungers and left him naked and defenseless to their blows.

Every nerve and sense ached with acute pain.
He now felt all of his father's humiliation, all his mother's querulous sorrow, all his betrothed's anguish and abasement.
Thoughts of suicide, and of flying to some part of the country where he was entirely unknown, crowded upon him incessantly.