An intense bitterness, a positive hatred toward Shadwell, who has brought all this discord into her hitherto happy life, grows within her, filling her with a most unjust longing to see him as wretched as he has unwittingly made her; while yet she shrinks with ever-increasing reluctance from the thought that soon she must bring herself to look again upon his dark but handsome face.
Luttrell, too,—she must meet him; and, with such swollen eyes and pallid cheeks, the bare idea brings a little color into her white face.
As eight o'clock strikes, she rises languidly from her bed, dressed as she is, disrobing hurriedly, lest even her woman should guess how wakeful she had been, throws open her window, and lets the pure cold air beat upon her features.
But when Sarah comes she is not deceived. So distressed is she at her young mistress's appearance that she almost weeps aloud, and gives it as her opinion that balls and all such nocturnal entertainments are the invention of the enemy.
CHAPTER XXV.
"Ah, starry hope, that didst arise
But to be overcast!"
—Edgar A. Poe.
"The ring asunder broke."