I had come among them clean, whole, with an upright bearing.

I was going away torn, bloody, and downcast.
If the last words of the lady of the Holly Sprig meant the sweet thing I thought they meant, then did they make the words which preceded them all the more bitter.

The more friendly and honest the counsels of Edith Larramie had grown, the deeper they had cut into my heart.

Even the more than regard with which my soul prompted me to look back to Amy Willoughby was a pain to me.

My judgment would enrage me if it should try to compel me to feel as I did not want to feel.
But none of these wounds would have so pained and disturbed me had it not been for the merciless gaze which that dark-eyed girl had fixed upon me as she passed me standing in the road.