She strove not to think of it, to busy herself with whatever interests she could find to hand. With this end in view, she took out for a long walk little Miss Bunter, who had been in low spirits for some days. She strove to cheer her. But Miss Bunter folded her drapery of depression all the more closely around her, and poured into Felicia's ears the history of her engagement with the man in Burmah.
“Our marriage has just been put off for another year,” she said. “I thought I had come to the end of my waiting. But he can't afford it yet; and you have no idea how expensive living is there.”
“Oh! I shouldn't have thought so,” said Felicia.
“My dear!” said Miss Bunter, straightening her thin shoulders reproachfully, “Mr. Dotterel says so, and he has been living there fifteen years.”
“It is strange that you have remained so fond of one another all this long time.”
“Do you think so? Oh, no!” replied Miss Bunter, with a convinced shake of her head. “When one loves really, it lasts for ever. But,” she added, sighing, “it has been a long engagement.”
So Felicia parted with Miss Bunter rather more depressed than before. She had thought to get outside the range of such things, but she had been brought only the closer within it.
She could not sleep that night. Many things troubled her, causing her cheek to burn in the darkness—the sudden rekindling within her of feelings against which her young maiden pride had ever revolted; the shame at having revealed them for the second time; the hope suggested by Raine's letter, to which it seemed a joy and a humiliation to cling; the discovery of Katherine's love.
She buried her face in her pillow, trying to hide from herself her self-abasement. So does it happen to many women, when their sudden investiture of womanhood comes to them, with its thoughts and sorrows, and, unaware, they still regard it with the eyes of a young girl.