seemed to her a terrible discovery of her own depravity.
Under its influence she became almost religious, and caused some
anxiety about her health to her mother, who was puzzled by her unwonted
seriousness, and, in particular, by her determination not to speak
of the misconduct of Trefusis, which was now the prevailing topic
of conversation in the family. She listened in silence to gossiping
discussions of his desertion of his wife, his heartless indifference
to her decease, his violence and bad language by her deathbed, his
parsimony, his malicious opposition to the wishes of the Janseniuses,
his cheap tombstone with the insulting epitaph, his association with
common workmen and low demagogues, his suspected connection with a
secret society for the assassination of the royal family and blowing
up of the army, his atheistic denial, in a pamphlet addressed to the
clergy, of a statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury that spiritual
aid alone could improve the condition of the poor in the East-end of
London, and the crowning disgrace of his trial for seditious libel at
the Old Bailey, where he was condemned to six months' imprisonment; a
penalty from which he was rescued by the ingenuity of his counsel, who
discovered a flaw in the indictment, and succeeded, at great cost to
Trefusis, in getting the sentence quashed. Agatha at last got tired of
hearing of his misdeeds. She believed him to be heartless, selfish, and
misguided, but she knew that he was not the loud, coarse, sensual, and
ignorant brawler most of her mother's gossips supposed him to be. She
even felt, in spite of herself, an emotion of gratitude to the few who
ventured to defend him.

Preparation for her first season helped her to forget her misadventure.
She "came out" in due time, and an extremely dull season she found it.
So much so, that she sometimes asked herself whether she should ever be
happy again. At the college there had been good fellowship, fun, rules,
and duties which were a source of strength when observed and a source
of delicious excitement when violated, freedom from ceremony, toffee
making, flights on the banisters, and appreciative audiences for the
soldier in the chimney.

In society there were silly conversations lasting half a minute, cool
acquaintanceships founded on such half-minutes, general reciprocity
of suspicion, overcrowding, insufficient ventilation, bad music badly
executed, late hours, unwholesome food, intoxicating liquor