In an ecstasy of shame she recalled the various episodes of their acquaintance, from the time when she had first engaged him to work for her (against his will), to the present intolerable moment.  There rose before her in an awful vision that night when she had found him sleeping in the library; when she had stayed and risked the chances of his waking.  Well, he could not think any the worse of her for that; because he had not waked.  But she had risked it.  The more she thought of it the more she saw what she had risked.  He would always think of her as a woman who did risky things.  Edith had said she had put herself in his power.  She remembered how she had come between him and the woman whom he would have married but for her; how she had invited him to sit with her when the Beaver was away.  He had liked it, but he must have had his own opinion of her all the same.  That was another of the risky things.  And of course he had taken advantage of it.  That was the very worst of all.  He had loved her in his way; she had been one of a series.  Flossie had come before her.  And before Flossie?  All that was fine in him had turned against Flossie because of the feeling she inspired.  And it had turned against her.

For now, when he had got over it, had forgotten that he had ever had that feeling, when all he wanted was to go his own way and let her go hers, she had tried to force herself upon him (Lucia was unaware of her violent distortion of the facts).  He had come with his simple honourable desire for reparation; and she had committed the unpardonable blunder—­she had mistaken his intentions.  And for the monument and crown of her dishonour, she, Lucia Harden, had proposed to him and been rejected.

Her misery endured (with some merciful intermissions) for three weeks.  Then Horace Jewdwine wrote and invited himself down for the first week-end in May.

“Can he come, Kitty?” she asked wearily.

“Of course he can, dear, if you want him,”

“I don’t want him; but I don’t mind his coming.”

Kitty said to herself, “He has an inkling; Edith has been saying things; and it has brought him to the point.”  Otherwise she could not account for such an abrupt adventure on the part of the deliberate Horace.  It was a Wednesday; and he proposed to come on Friday.  He came on Friday.  Kitty’s observation was on the alert; but it could detect nothing that first evening beyond a marked improvement in Horace Jewdwine.  With Lucia he was sympathetic, deferential, charming.  He also laid himself out, a little elaborately, to be agreeable to Kitty.

In the morning he approached Lucia with a gift, brought for her birthday ("I thought,” said Lucia, “he had forgotten that I ever had a birthday").  It was an early copy of Rickman’s tragedy The Triumph of Life, just published.  His keen eyes watched her handling it.

“He suspects,” thought Kitty, “and he’s testing her.”