"That is forbidden you, now."
"It was forbidden me from the first; yet, when I saw him I loved him. What was I to do?"
Constance waited, but the girl had fallen silent.
"Is there more you wish to tell me?"
"No more."
She bent and kissed the cold cheek on her shoulder.
"Don't sit up, child. If there is any reason for waking you I will come myself."
"Thank you."
So they parted, Constance to seek her room and lie down partly dressed; Shiela to the new quarters still strange and abhorrent to her.
Her maid, half dead with fatigue, slept in a chair, and young Mrs. Malcourt aroused her and sent her off to bed. Then she roamed through the rooms, striving to occupy her mind with the negative details of the furnishing; but it was all drearily harmless, unaccented anywhere by personal taste, merely the unmeaning harmony executed by a famous New York decorator, at Portlaw's request—a faultless monotony from garret to basement.