She had lived in it; she had known no other wish, no other desire.

It had been her all and now it was less than nothing.
"How am I to live and bear it ?" she asked herself again; and the only answer that came to her was the dull echo of her own despair.
That night, while the sweet flowers slept under the light of the stars, and the little birds rested in the deep shade of the trees--while the night wind whispered low, and the moon sailed in the sky--Philippa L'Estrange, the belle of the season, one of the most beautiful women in London, one of the wealthiest heiresses in England, wept through the long hours--wept for the overthrow of her hope and her love, wept for the life that lay in ruins around her.
She was of dauntless courage--she knew no fear; but she did tremble and quail before the future stretching out before her--the future that was to have no love, and was to be spent without him.
How was she to bear it?
She had known no other hope in life, no other dream.

What had been childish nonsense to him had been to her a serious and exquisite reality.

He had either forgotten it, or had thought of it only with annoyance; she had made it the very corner-stone of her life.
It was not only a blow of the keenest and cruelest kind to her affections, but it was the cruelest blow her vanity could have possibly received.

To think that she, who had more admirers at her feet than any other woman in London, should have tried so hard to win this one, and have failed--that her beauty, her grace, her wit, her talent, should all have been lavished in vain.
Why did she fail so completely?
Why had she not won his love?
It was given to no other--at least she had the consolation of knowing that.