felt unworthy.
The ingenious torments of a false conscience gnawed her. Her better
judgment pronounced that conscience veritably false; or would, as she
believed, so pronounce later when she had time to get a true perspective.
But, just now, she could only lamentably, childishly, cry out against
injustice. For wasn't Henrietta mainly responsible for the character of
her intercourse with Marshall Wace? Hadn't Henrietta repeatedly entreated
her to see much of him, be kind to him?--Wishing, even in her present
rebellion to be quite fair, she acknowledged that she had enjoyed his
singing and reading; that she had felt pleased at his eagerness to
confide his troubles to her and talk confidentially about himself. She
not unwillingly accepted a mission towards him, stimulated thereto by
Henrietta's plaudits and thanks.

And--and Colonel Carteret? For now somehow she no longer, even in
thought, could call him by her old name for him, "the dear man with the
blue eyes."--Could it be true, as Henrietta intimated, that he went
through life throwing the handkerchief first to one woman and then to
another? That there was no real constancy or security in his affections,
but all was lightly come and lightly go with him?

How her poor head ached! She held it in both hands and closed her
eyes.--She would not think any more about Colonel Carteret. To do so made
her temples throb and raised the lump, which is a precursor of tears, in
her throat.

No--she couldn't follow Henrietta's statements and arguments either way.
They were self-contradictory. Still, whose ever the fault, that the young
man Wace should be unhappy on her account, should think she--Damaris--had
behaved heartlessly to him, was quite dreadful. Humiliating too--false
conscience again gnawing. Had she really contracted a debt towards him,
which she--in his opinion and Henrietta's--tried to repudiate? She seemed
to hear it, the rich impassioned voice, and hear it with a new
comprehension. Was "caring in _that_ way" what it had striven to tell
her; and had she, incomparably dense in missing its meaning, appeared to
sanction the message and to draw him on? Other people understood--so at
least Henrietta implied; while she, remaining deaf, had rather cruelly
misled him. Ought she not to do something to make up? Yet what could she
do?--It had never occurred to her that--that--

She held her head tight. Held it on, as with piteous humour she told
herself, since she seemed in h