It was part of a feeling which she had always within her—­the sense of living under the shadow of some dark destiny which would not be mitigated or withheld.  It was a strange point of view for one so young, but it had been hers ever since she remembered anything.  The tragedy and the shame which had come into her life recently had found her, as it were, waiting.  She regarded them merely as the partial fulfilment of the unescapable thing which had been prepared for her before she was born, and had dogged her lonely footsteps since childhood.  In the isolated circumstances of her life and upbringings it was not strange, perhaps, that she had such imaginings.

She had loved Charles Turold with all the strength of a passionate solitary nature, and it was this feeling or instinct of fatality which had given her the strength to renounce him.  Indeed, it seemed to her that that inseparable companion of her inmost thoughts had prompted her to linger outside the door at Flint House on this afternoon so that she should overhear her father’s words—­catch that sinister fragment of a sentence which compelled her to refuse the love of Charles until she had learnt the truth.  She could not listen to him with that secret half-guessed.  And, the full truth known, no other course was open to her save renunciation.

She had not wavered.  Sometimes, in the vain way of the young heart seeking for happiness, she found herself wishing that she had not listened at the door to those few words which sent her back to Flint House that awful night to learn the truth from her father, or, at least, had not acted upon them.  The words she overheard had not told her much, and she might have tried to forget them.  But she thrust that thought from her like an evil thing.  She would have hated herself if she had followed that course and found out the truth of her birth afterwards, deeming herself unworthy of the love of one who had been ready to sacrifice everything for her sake.  No!  It was better, far better, that she should know.

She had not thought of suspicion falling on herself.  Her youth and inexperience, borne upward on the lofty wings of sacrifice, had not foreseen the damning significance which might gather round her secret visit to Flint House and her subsequent disappearance.  Not even when she heard of her father’s death had the folly of her contemplated action dawned on her.  Her dreamy unpractical temperament, keyed up to the great act of abnegation, had not paused to consider what the consequences might be to herself.

Lying there in the darkness of her room, she recalled how that revelation had been made to her.  It was the first night after her arrival in London, in the drawing-room of a private hotel near Russell Square, where she had intended staying for a few days while she sought for some kind of employment.  There was a group of women seated round the fireplace, talking.  She was seated by herself some distance away, turning