Every nerve in her body tingled with shame when she thought what a miserable fraud she was; what a mass of pretensions unfounded, of deceit ingrained.

She was ready to hide her face in her hands.

She was disgusted, outraged with her own image as she saw it, contrasted with Carrington's single word: Perfect! Nor was this the worst.

Carrington was not the first man who had thought her perfect.

To hear this word suddenly used again, which had never been uttered to her before except by lips now dead and gone, made her brain reel.