herself, and
herself alone, as it seemed, made responsible for this disaster; for
the feeling beginning with Katie seemed to grow, and widen, and widen,
like the circles of water into which a stone is thrown, and she was
condemned by her friends, by the people who had known her and her
father, condemned as false to her friendship, as unwomanly. Katie she
could forgive on account of her misery, but the others! She stood
motionless in a world that she had never dreamed of. These whispers that
her imagination multiplied seemed to roar in her ears. But innocence and
pride kept her erect, and at last made her raise her eyes which had
fallen and grown dim under the blow of Katie's words. She swept them
slowly around the room, turning her head slightly to do it. Not a look
of sympathy met her. Then, in the pain, a power awoke within her.

"It is no less a disaster to me," she said. Her words fell with the
weight of truth. She had kept back her pain, no one thought of pitying
her as Katie was pitied, but she was vindicated.

"Does she hate him, do you suppose?" asked Madam Pepperrell in a low
tone of Governor Wentworth at her elbow.

"It is not probable she loves him much," replied that gentleman studying
the girl's haughty face. "I don't envy her, on the whole, I don't envy
either of them." By George, madam, it _is_ hard."

"Very hard," assented Colonel Pepperrell, whose glance, having more
penetration, had at last brought a look of sympathy to his face. "Let us
go up to the poor thing, she stands so alone, and I'm not clear that she
has not the worst of it."

"Oh, no, indeed, not that," returned his wife as they moved forward. But
before they could reach her, being stopped by several who spoke to them,
there was a change in the group in that part of the room. Katie had
fallen, and there was a cry that she had fainted. Stephen stooped over
her, lifted her tenderly, and carried her from the room. He was followed
by Mistress Archdale and his own mother. As he passed Elizabeth their
eyes met, his glowed with a sullen rage, born of pain and despair, they
seemed to sweep her with a glance of scorn, as she looked at him it
seemed to her that every fibre of his being was rejecting her. "You!" he
seemed to be saying with contemptuous emphasis. In answer her eyes
filled him with their haughtiness, they and the scornful curl of her
lip, as she stood motionless waiting for him to pass, haunted him; it
seemed to him as if she felt it