"Now, mother, you have never seen me in trouble," said Kitty, lightly; "you do not know how wise I should be."
"No, indeed, child," replied Mrs. Bland, with a tender glance at her eldest girl. "God grant I never may!"
"The best thing for Hilda would be a change," she added, turning to Aldyth. "I had a letter from my cousin, Mrs. Lancaster, a fortnight ago, asking me to let my girls go with her and her daughter for a tour in Brittany. Hilda did not care about it, so we refused the invitation; but I think perhaps she might be persuaded to go now, and as my cousin does not start till next week, I have written to ask if she is still willing to take the girls."
"Oh, that would surely be good for Hilda," said Aldyth. "She has never been abroad. Oh, I hope you will be able to arrange it."
"I should not wonder if Hilda positively refuses to go," said Kitty.
But her sister proved in this instance more tractable than Kitty expected. Life was strong in her after all; and, since it became every day more clear that she was not going to die: absence from Woodham seemed the only condition under which life could be endured. Hilda's pride was, perhaps, as deeply wounded as her affections. She dreaded to meet the observant, perhaps pitying, glances of her acquaintances; she hated the thought of the talk concerning her broken engagement that must be going on in Woodham.
But each wound was deep, and the disappointment was none the less keen that she had perhaps been more in love with love than with Guy Lorraine. She had cherished her love, she had brooded over it, she had fed it with all food of the imagination which she could draw from poet or romance writer. And the romantic love thus fostered was not the strong, clear-sighted love which discerns and comprehends every fact relating to the one beloved. The true Guy, Hilda had never known. The greater on this account was the pain she suffered when her lover began to treat her with carelessness and indifference; the more crushing the blow dealt by the coolly-written letter in which he informed her that he had discovered that he had "mistaken his feelings" when he thought that he loved her, but, was now convinced that they were "not, in the least suited to each other."
As she had brooded over her love, Hilda now brooded over her sorrow; nursing it, magnifying it, letting her fancy play over it, and desiring, not comfort, but due appreciation of the greatness of her misery.
Aldyth was glad when she knew that Kitty and Hilda had started to join the Lancasters in London. She believed that the thorough change and diversion afforded by a foreign tour must help Hilda to recover her spirits.
Aldyth felt deeply for Hilda, whose state of mind she understood perhaps better than Kitty did, for she had seen all along how completely Hilda had deceived herself with regard to the character of Guy Lorraine. It annoyed Aldyth to see how utterly Guy ignored that he had anything to be ashamed of in his treatment of Hilda Bland. He rather seemed to pride himself on the way in which he had acted. It commended itself to his sense of prudence; and he was not the only person at Woodham who regarded his action thus favourably, nor was Clara Dawtrey the only one who derived satisfaction from the thought of Hilda Bland's mortification. But Aldyth could only explain the irreproachable air with which Guy bore himself by the assumption that he was so constituted as to be incapable of certain thoughts and feelings which to her appeared natural and essential. She was destined to receive further proof of this theory ere long.