n of Mrs. Ormonde's--a
question asked in the overheard conversation? 'Have you altogether
forgotten Annabel?' And Walter's reply had shown that he did once love
someone named Annabel. He had asked her to marry him, and she--strange
beyond thought!--had refused him. Thyrza believed--she could not be
quite sure, but she believed--that she had heard Mrs. Ormonde address
Miss Newthorpe by that name. She remembered Miss Newthorpe very
distinctly, her refined beauty, her delightful playing; strangely, too,
she had associated Egremont with that lady in the thoughts she had
after her return from Eastbourne. If that were Annabel, did there
remain no fear? If he had once loved her, might not the love revive? He
and she would meet--doubtless, would meet. Her beauty, her
accomplishments, would be present, and was there no danger to the newer
love if that memory were frequently brought back?

If he had not loved Annabel, be she who she might! If this love for
herself had been his first love, how thankful she would have been! The
love she gave him was her first; never had she loved Gilbert Grail,
though she had thought her friendship for him deserved the dearer name.
Her first love, truly, and would it not be her last?

Very often, when she had sat down to her hook, thoughts of this kind
would come and distract her. What to her were the kings of old Eastern
lands, the conquests of Rome, the long chronicles dense with forgotten
battle and woe? So easily she could have yielded to her former habits,
and have passed hour after hour in reverie. What--she wondered now--had
she dreamed of in those far-off days? Was it not foresight of the
mystery one day to rule her life? Had she not visioned these sorrows
and these priceless joys, when as yet unable to understand them?
Indeed, sometimes there seemed no break between then and now. She
longed unconsciously for what was now come, that was all. Everything
had befallen so naturally, so inevitably, step by step, a rising from
vision to vision.

Would the future perfect her life's progress?

But Lydia was not forgotten. To her she wrote long letters, telling all
that she might tell. The one thing of which she would most gladly have
spoken to her sister must never be touched upon. For in one respect
Lydia was against her--fixedly against her; she had come to know that
too well. Lydia bitterly resented Egremont's coming between her sister
and Gilbert; she hoped his name would never again be spo