but at last, with
desperate fortitude, she took it out with her and posted it herself.
She told no word of it to any one. Her mother, she thought, had been
cruel to her, had disregarded her feelings, and made her wretched for
ever. She could not ask her mother for sympathy in her present
distress. There was no friend who would sympathize with her. She must
do everything alone.

Mrs Hurtle, it will be remembered, had at last determined that she
would retire from the contest and own herself to have been worsted. It
is, I fear, impossible to describe adequately the various half
resolutions which she formed, and the changing phases of her mind
before she brought herself to this conclusion. And soon after she had
assured herself that this should be the conclusion,--after she had told
Paul Montague that it should be so,--there came back upon her at times
other half resolutions to a contrary effect. She had written a letter
to the man threatening desperate revenge, and had then abstained from
sending it, and had then shown it to the man,--not intending to give it
to him as a letter upon which he would have to act, but only that she
might ask him whether, had he received it, he would have said that he
had not deserved it. Then she had parted with him, refusing either to
hear or to say a word of farewell, and had told Mrs Pipkin that she
was no longer engaged to be married. At that moment everything was done
that could be done. The game had been played and the stakes lost,--
and she had schooled herself into such restraint as to have abandoned
all idea of vengeance. But from time to time there arose in her heart
a feeling that such softness was unworthy of her. Who had ever been
soft to her? Who had spared her? Had she not long since found out that
she must fight with her very nails and teeth for every inch of ground,
if she did not mean to be trodden into the dust? Had she not held her
own among rough people after a very rough fashion, and should she now
simply retire that she might weep in a corner like a love-sick
schoolgirl? And she had been so stoutly determined that she would at
any rate avenge her own wrongs, if she could not turn those wrongs
into triumph! There were moments in which she thought that she could
still seize the man by the throat, where all the world might see her,
and dare him to deny that he was false, perjured, and mean.

Then she received a long passionate letter from Paul Montague, written
at the sam