She could guess but too easily how they wondered and gossiped over her affairs, blaming her for jilting Desha, asking each other what sensational freak she would indulge in next.
It was torture to the sensitive girl, who looked back with keen regret to those thoughtless days when she had played with men’s hearts as toys, never stopping to think until brought to bay by her father’s reprimand and the terrible affair of young Merrington.
When Viola thought of that, and how narrowly she had escaped life-long remorse at his death, she always shuddered with fear and renewed her vows never to flirt again.
But the carping world could not guess at her remorse and penitence, and she knew well that hard things were whispered of her on the sly, even while the speakers smiled their sweetest, pretending friendship of which they were incapable.
Ah, how cold and hollow is the world, and how little truth is found in the human heart!—just here and there one pure, white, noble soul, disdaining every petty meanness, lonely on earth because its mates are so few.
“Ah, the bewildering masquerade of Life,
Where strangers walk as friends and friends as strangers;
Where whispers overheard betray false hearts,
And through the mazes of the crowd we chase
Some form of loveliness that smiles and beckons,