heiress, whom Lady Lansmere secretly hoped her son
Harley would admire, but who had long since, no less secretly, given her
heart to the unconscious Egerton.

Meanwhile, the miserable Nora--deceived by the arts and representations
of Levy, acting on the natural impulse of a heart so susceptible to
shame, flying from a home which she deemed dishonoured, flying from a
lover whose power over her she knew to be so great that she dreaded lest
he might reconcile her to dishonour itself--had no thought save to hide
herself forever from Audley's eye. She would not go to her relations,
to Lady Jane; that were to give the clew, and invite the pursuit. An
Italian lady of high rank had visited at Lady Jane's,--taken a great
fancy to Nora; and the lady's husband, having been obliged to precede
her return to Italy, had suggested the notion of engaging some
companion; the lady had spoken of this to Nora and to Lady Jane Horton,
who had urged Nora to accept the offer, elude Harley's pursuit, and go
abroad for a time. Nora then had refused; for she then had seen Audley
Egerton.

To this Italian lady she now went, and the offer was renewed with the
most winning kindness, and grasped at in the passion of despair. But the
Italian had accepted invitations to English country-houses before she
finally departed for the Continent. Meanwhile Nora took refuge in a
quiet lodging in a sequestered suburb, which an English servant in the
employment of the fair foreigner recommended. Thus had she first come
to the cottage in which Burley died. Shortly afterwards she left England
with her new companion, unknown to all,--to Lady Jane as to her parents.

All this time the poor girl was under a moral delirium, a confused
fever, haunted by dreams from which she sought to fly. Sound
physiologists agree that madness is rarest amongst persons of the finest
imagination. But those persons are, of all others, liable to a temporary
state of mind in which judgment sleeps,--imagination alone prevails with
a dire and awful tyranny. A single idea gains ascendancy, expels all
others, presents itself everywhere with an intolerable blinding glare.
Nora was at that time under the dread one idea, to fly from shame!

But when the seas rolled, and the dreary leagues interposed between
her and her lover; when new images presented themselves; when the fever
slaked, and reason returned,--doubt broke upon the previous despair. Had
she not been too credulous, too hasty? Fool