y that
she had ever done or said the least thing to let him suppose that she
cared for him. If she had, she should not forgive herself, and she
should pity him as much as she blamed him now. There was nothing in her
whole conduct that would have warranted her in supposing such a thing,
if she were a man. Cornelia had this comfort, and she clung to it, till
it flashed through her that not being a man, she could not imagine what
the things were that could let a man suppose it. She had never thought
of that before, and it dazed her. Perhaps he had seen all along that
she did care for him, that he had known it in some way unknown and
forever unknowable to her; the way a man knows; and all her disguises
had availed nothing against him. Then, if he had known, he had acted
very deceitfully and very wrongfully, and nothing could excuse him
unless there had been other signs that a girl would recognize, too.
That would excuse him, it would justify him, and she tried to see the
affair with another woman's eyes. She tried to see it with Charmian's
eves, but she knew they were filled with a romantic iridescence that
danced before them and wrapt it in a rainbow mist. Then she tried Mrs.
Westley's eyes, which she knew were friendly to both Ludlow and
herself, and she told her everything in her impassioned revery: all
about that little wretch; all about the first portrait of Charmian and
the likeness they had seen in it; all about what had happened since
Ludlow began to criticise her work again. In the mere preparation for
this review she found another's agency insufferable; she abandoned
herself wildly to a vision which burned itself upon her in mass and
detail, under a light that searched motive and conduct alike, and left
her no refuge from the truth. Then she perceived, how at every moment
since they began those last lessons at Charmain's he must have believed
she cared for him and wished him to care for her. If she had not seen
it too, it was because she was stupid, and she was to blame all the
same. She was blind to what he saw in her, and she had thought because
she was hidden from herself that she was hidden from him.

It was not a question now of whether she cared for him, or not; that
was past all question; but whether she had not led him on to think she
did, and she owned that down to the last moment before he had spoken,
wittingly or unwittingly she had coaxed him to praise her, to console
her, lo make love to her. She was