She returned Mr.Hawkehurst's indifference with corresponding disregard.

If his manner was cold as a bleak autumn, hers was icy as a severe winter; only now and then, when she was very tired of her joyless existence, her untutored womanhood asserted itself, and she betrayed the real state of her feelings--betrayed herself as she had done on her last night at Foretdechene, when she and Valentine had looked down at the lighted windows shining dimly through the purple of the summer night.

She looked back at the past now in the quiet of the school-garden, and tried to remember how miserable she had been, what agonies of despair she had suffered, how brief had been her delights, how bitter her disappointments.

She tried to remember what tortures she had suffered from that wasted passion, that useless devotion.

She tried to rejoice in the consciousness of the peace and respectability of her present life; but she could not.