She had been sitting there for hours, after a terrible scene with her mother downstairs, and from acute distress she had passed into a state of torpid misery that enveloped her like a black cloud.  She felt almost too exhausted, too numbed, to think.  Her thoughts wandered drearily back and forth.  She was sure she had been very greatly to blame, yet she could not fix upon any definite juncture at which she had begun to go wrong.  Her engagement had been such a whirlwind of Fate.  She had been carried off her feet from the very beginning.  And the deliverance from the home bondage had seemed so fair a prospect.  Now she was plunged, back again into that bondage, and she was firmly convinced that no chance of freedom would ever be offered to her again.  Yet she knew that she had done right to draw back.  Regret it though she might again and again in the bitter days to come, she knew—­and she would always know—­that at the eleventh hour she had done right.

She had been true to the greatest impulse that had ever stirred her soul.  It had been at a frightful cost.  She had sacrificed everything—­everything—­to a vision that she might never realize.  She had cast away all the glitter and the wealth for this far greater thing which yet could never be more to her than a golden dream.  She had even cast away love, and her heart still bled at the memory.  But she had been true—­she had been true.

Not yet was the sacrifice ended.  She knew that a cruel ordeal yet awaited her.  There was the morrow to be faced, the morrow with its renewal of disgrace and punishment.  Her mother was furious with her, so furious that for the first time in her life her father had intervened on her behalf and temporarily restrained the flow of wrath.  Perhaps he had seen her utter weariness, for he had advised her, not unkindly, to go to bed.  She had gone to her room, thankful to escape, but neither tea nor supper had followed her thither.  Billy had come to bid her good night long ago, but, though he had not said so, he also, it seemed, was secretly disgusted with her, and he had not lingered.  It would be the same with everyone, she thought to herself wearily.  No one would ever realize how terribly hard it had all been.  No one would dream of extending any pity to her.  And of course she had done wrong.  She knew it, was quite ready to admit it.  But the wrong had lain in accepting that overweaning lover of hers, not in giving him up.  Also, she ought to have found out long ago.  She wondered how it was she hadn’t.  It had never been a happy engagement.

Again her eyes wandered to the exquisite folds of that dress which she was never to wear.  How she had loved the thought of it and all the lovely things that Isabel had procured for her!  What would become of them all, she wondered?  All the presents downstairs would have to go back.  Yes, and Eustace’s ring!  She had forgotten that.  She slipped it off her finger with a little dry sob, and put it