She was down stairs, and out upon the beach, in five minutes; and, once away from the house, she began to walk furiously. She looked neither to right nor left, as she went. She was not in the humor to have her attention distracted from her thoughts by any beauty of sea, or sky, or shore. She saw the yellow sand before her, and that was all. She reached the old trysting-place, among the rocks, before she stopped. Once there, she gave herself time to breathe, and, standing still, looked back at the ground over which she had come. There was a worn-out expression in her face, such as the Misses Tregarthyn had never yet seen, even when they thought her at her worst. And yet, in a minute more, she smiled with actual grimness.
“I am being punished now,” she said, aloud. “I am being punished now for everything I have ever done in my life. Now I begin to understand.”
There was humiliation enough in her soul then to have made her grovel in the sand at her feet, if she had been prone to heroics or drama. Yes, she was beginning to understand. It was her turn now. Oh, to have come to this! To have learned this!
It was characteristic of her nature—an unfortunate nature at this time, passing through a new experience, and battling fiercely against it—that when, immediately afterward, the tears began to fill her eyes, and roll down her cheeks, they were the bitter, bitter tears of passionate mortification and anger. She could almost have killed herself, for very self-contempt and shame.
“What reason is there in it?” she said. “None. What has brought me to it? Nothing. Is he as worthy now as he was then? No! Isn’t it sheer madness? Yes, it is.”
She spoke truly, too. There was no reason in it. It was madness. He had done nothing to touch her heart, had made no effort to reach it. And yet he had reached and touched it. It would not have been like her to love a man because he was good, because he had made love to her; indeed, because of anything. Her actions were generally without any cause but her own peremptory fancies; and here, some strange, sudden caprice of emotion had been too much for her. How she had suffered since she discovered her weakness, no one but herself would ever know. She had writhed under it, burned under it, loathed it, and yet been conquered by it. Almost every blade of Pen’yllan grass reminded her of some wrong she had done to the kindly, impetuous young fellow, who had loved her in the past. Almost every grain of Pen’yllan sand taunted her with some wanton selfishness, or cruelty, which must be remembered by the man who could have nothing but dislike for her in the present.
“I should be grateful now,” she cried, bitterly. “Yes! Grateful for a tithe of what I once had under foot. This is eating dirt with a vengeance.”
She might well frighten Miss Clarissa with her pallor and wretched looks. The intensity of her misery and humiliation was wearing her out, and robbing her of sleep and appetite. She wanted to leave Pen’yllan, but how could she suggest it? Georgie was so happy, she told herself, with a vindictive pleasure in her pain, that it would be a pity to disturb her.
She walked up and down the beach for half an hour before she returned home; and when she went her way, she was so tired as to be fairly exhausted. At the side door, by which she entered the house, she met Georgie, who held an open letter in her hand.
“Whom from?” asked Lisbeth, for lack of something to say.