She had someone to confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom she loved a little.

She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, but had always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to a more prominent red, with a plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now able to tell her sister everything.
The recital took hours.

A few minutes had been enough on the subject of the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings, when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the rush of confidences would never cease.

Magdalen listened hour by hour.
Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about ourselves?
Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceive anyone except ourselves?
We alone seem unable to read between the lines of our self-revelations.

We alone seem unable to perceive that sinister ghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured up from our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of one whom we have never known.