lligence was
awake was shown by the fact that before she left the grove she remembered
that she had forgotten her sunshade. She went back and searched till she
had found it.
Gaining her room without meeting any one, she at once change her dress,
fearing that some soil or wrinkle might betray her. Resolutely she put
back from her mind all consideration of the past; there would be time for
that later on. Her nerves were already much quieter than they had been.
That long faint, or lapse into insensibility, had for the time taken the
place of sleep. There would be a price to be paid for it later; but for
the present it had served its purpose. Now and again she was disturbed
by one thought; she could not quite remember what had occurred after
Harold had left, and just before she became unconscious. She dared not
dwell upon it, however. It would doubtless all come back to her when she
had leisure to think the whole matter over as a connected narrative.
When the gong sounded for lunch she went down, with a calm exterior, to
face the dreaded ordeal of another meal.
Luncheon passed off without a hitch. She and her aunt talked as usual
over all the small affairs of the house and the neighbourhood, and the
calm restraint was in itself soothing. Even then she could not help
feeling how much convention is to a woman's life. Had it not been for
these recurring trials of set hours and duties she could never have
passed the last day and night without discovery of her condition of mind.
That one terrible, hysterical outburst was perhaps the safety valve. Had
it been spread over the time occupied in conventional duties its force
even then might have betrayed her; but without the necessity of nerving
herself to conventional needs, she would have infallibly betrayed herself
by her negative condition.
After lunch she went to her own boudoir where, when she had shut the
inner door, no one was allowed to disturb her without some special need
in the house or on the arrival of visitors. This 'sporting oak' was the
sign of 'not at home' which she had learned in her glimpse of college
life. Here in the solitude of safety, she began to go over the past,
resolutely and systematically.
She had already been so often over the memory of the previous humiliating
and unhappy day that she need not revert to it at present. Since then
had she not quarrelled with Harold, whom she had all her life so trusted
that her quarrel with him s
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