Then she heard her own name--"to my niece Lily Bart ten thousand dollars--" and after that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with startling distinctness: "and the residue of my estate to my dear cousin and name-sake, Grace Julia Stepney." There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and a surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney wailed out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a black-edged handkerchief.
Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the first time utterly alone.

No one looked at her, no one seemed aware of her presence; she was probing the very depths of insignificance.

And under her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter pang of hopes deceived.

Disinherited--she had been disinherited--and for Grace Stepney! She met Gerty's lamentable eyes, fixed on her in a despairing effort at consolation, and the look brought her to herself.

There was something to be done before she left the house: to be done with all the nobility she knew how to put into such gestures.