er. She did not feel that she wanted to ask for any advice. But she
did feel that this count might still work her additional woe, that her
cup of sorrow might not even yet be full, and that she was sadly--sadly
in want of love and protection. For aught she knew, the count might
publish the whole statement, and people might believe that those words
came from her husband, and that her husband had understood what would be
best for her fame and for his honor. The whole thing was a threat, and
not to save herself from any misery, would she have succumbed to a
menace; but still it was possible that the threat might be carried out.

She was sorely in want of love and protection. At this time, when the
count's letter reached her, Harry had been with her; and we know what
had passed between them. She had bid him go to Florence, and love
Florence, and marry Florence, and leave her in her desolation. That had
been her last command to him. But we all know what such commands mean.
She had not been false in giving him these orders. She had intended it
at the moment. The glow of self-sacrifice had been warm in her bosom,
and she had resolved to do without that which she wanted, in order that
another might have it. But when she thought of it afterward in her
loneliness, she told herself that Florence Burton could not want Harry's
love as she wanted it. There could not be such need to this girl, who
possessed father and mother, and brothers, and youth, as there was to
her, who had no other arm on which she could lean, beside that of the
one man for whom she had acknowledged her love, and who had also
declared his passion for her. She made no scheme to deprive Florence of
her lover. In the long hours of her own solitude she never revoked,
even within her own bosom, the last words she had said to Harry
Clavering. But not the less did she hope that he might come to her
again, and that she might learn from him that he had freed himself from
that unfortunate engagement into which her falseness to him had driven
him.

It was after she had answered Count Pateroff's letter that she resolved
to go out of town for three or four days. For some short time she had
been minded to go away altogether, and not to return till after the
Autumn; but this scheme gradually diminished itself and fell away, till
she determined that she would come back after three or four days. Then
came to her Sophie--her devoted Sophie--Sophie whom she despised and
hated; So