But the close of the short dreary evening left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted.

She had not tried to see Dorset alone: she had positively shrunk from a renewal of his confidences.

It was Bertha whose confidence she sought, and who should as eagerly have invited her own; and Bertha, as if in the infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her rescuing hand.
Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves; and it seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved that more than an hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down the silent passage and regain her room.

The morrow, rising on an apparent continuance of the same conditions, revealed nothing of what had occurred between the confronted pair.

One fact alone outwardly proclaimed the change they were all conspiring to ignore; and that was the non-appearance of Ned Silverton.