In the isolated circumstances of her life and upbringings it was not strange, perhaps, that she had such imaginings.
She had loved Charles Turold with all the strength of a passionate solitary nature, and it was this feeling or instinct of fatality which had given her the strength to renounce him.

Indeed, it seemed to her that that inseparable companion of her inmost thoughts had prompted her to linger outside the door at Flint House on this afternoon so that she should overhear her father's words--catch that sinister fragment of a sentence which compelled her to refuse the love of Charles until she had learnt the truth.

She could not listen to him with that secret half-guessed.

And, the full truth known, no other course was open to her save renunciation.
She had not wavered.

Sometimes, in the vain way of the young heart seeking for happiness, she found herself wishing that she had not listened at the door to those few words which sent her back to Flint House that awful night to learn the truth from her father, or, at least, had not acted upon them.