he had deliberately deceived her friends when she had asserted that her
uncle had known all Trenholme's affairs. She had not the slightest doubt
now, looking back, that he had known--a thousand small things testified
to it; but he had not made a confidante of her, his niece, and she knew
that that would be the inference drawn from her assertion. She knew,
too, that the reason her uncle, who had died soon after, had not told
her was that he never dreamed that then or afterwards she would come
into intimate relationship with his protege. To give the impression that
he, and she also, knowing Trenholme's origin, had overlooked it, was
totally false. Yet she did not regret this falsehood. Who with a spark
of chivalry would not have dealt as hard a blow as strength might permit
in return for so mean an attack on the absent man? But none the less did
her heart upbraid the man she had defended.

Sophia stood, as in a place where two seas met, between her indignation
against the spirit Mrs. Bennett had displayed (and which she knew was
lying latent ready to be fanned into flame in the hearts of only too
many of Trenholme's so-called friends) and her indignation against
Trenholme and his history. But it was neither the one current of emotion
nor the other that caused that dagger-like pain that stabbed her pride
to the quick. It was not Robert Trenholme's concerns that touched her
self-love.

She had gained her own room to be alone. "Heaven help me," she cried
(her ejaculation had perhaps no meaning except that she had need of
expletive), "what a fool I have been!"

She rehearsed each meeting she had had with Alec Trenholme. How she had
dallied with him in fields and on the road, seeing now clearly, as never
before, how she had smiled upon him, how she had bewitched him. What
mischance had led her on? She sprang up again from the seat into which
she had sunk. "Mercy!" she cried in an agony of shame, "was ever woman
so foolish as I? I have treated him as a friend, and he is--!"

Then for some reason, she ceased to think of herself and thought of him.
She considered: had he made no effort? had he felt no pain? She saw how
he had waveringly tried to avoid her at first, and how, at last, he had
tried to warn her. She thought upon the epithet he had applied to
himself when trying to explain himself to her: she lifted her head
again, and, in a glow of generous thought, she felt that this was a
friend of whom no one need be ashamed.