ow Rachel laughed. All the evening she was the most brilliant,
beautiful, witty creature that ever enlivened a company.

CHAPTER VIII.

My children, when I sat that night over the embers of my dying fire in
my chamber at Hillsbro' Hall, whilst every one else was asleep, there
has never been a more desolate creature in the world than I felt myself
to be. I had behaved all the evening very meekly and quietly, keeping
out of John's way, accepting Rachel's attentions, watching and admiring
her with a dull kind of fascination. I remember observing absently, in a
mirror at the other end of the room, the white pensive face of a young
girl sitting very still in a corner, rapt in thought or pain. I wondered
whether she was sick or in trouble; but afterwards I found by accident
that I had been speculating about myself. A little chill smile came to
my lips at this discovery; but I felt hardly any surprise at seeing
myself thus so different from what I had ever been before. The world had
changed, and I with it, since the fall of twilight in the gallery.

Rachel sang and the room applauded; people danced and Rachel amongst
them; young gentlemen were introduced to me, and I told them "I don't
dance" with my cold lips. There was an agonising pressure on my senses,
of sound, light, perfume. I thought it was these things that gave the
pain, while from my heart, which seemed perfectly still, came forth at
intervals the repetition "I will get over it, I will get over it." John
found me out, and said, quite startled, "What is the matter with you,
Margery?" I complained of "my head," and drew back within the shelter of
a curtain. "Margery, my dearest, you are ill," he said, and then the
flood-gates of bitterness opened in my heart. How long was he going to
act a cruel lie to me? I said, "I am ill; I must go to bed." He followed
me out of the room, questioned me anxiously, wrapped me in a shawl,
stood at the foot of the stairs watching till I passed out of sight; all
as if he had still loved me.

When I reached my room I blew out my candles, and the fireplace was the
only spot of light in the large shadowy room. I walked up and down in
the dark, thinking about it all. I could imagine how Rachel and John had
met whilst I was still in Miss Sweetman's school-room. There had been a
quarrel, and then had come John's misfortunes, and they had never met
again till that morning in the sunrise on the snow. I knew the story as
perfectly as