half contemptuous of the outside troubles
which were no match for her indomitable heart, Nettie had been fighting
against hard external circumstances for a great part of her valorous
little life, and had not hesitated to take upon herself the heaviest
burdens of outside existence. Such struggles are not hard when one's
heart is light and sound. With a certain splendid youthful scorn of all
these labours and drudgeries, Nettie had gone on her triumphant way,
wearing her bonds as if they were ornaments. Suddenly, without any
premonition, the heart had died out of her existence. A personal blow,
striking with subtle force into that unseen centre of courage and hope,
had suddenly disabled Nettie. She said not a word on the subject to any
living creature--if she shed any tears over it, they were dropped in
the darkness, and left no witness behind; but she silently recognised
and understood what had happened to her. It was not that she had lost
her lover--it was not that the romance of youth had glimmered and
disappeared from before her eyes. It was not that she had ever entered,
even in thought, as Edward Rider had done, into that life, glorified out
of common existence, which the two could have lived together. Such was
not the form which this extraordinary loss took to Nettie. It was her
personal happiness, wonderful wine of life, which had suddenly failed to
the brave little girl. Ah, the difference it made! Labours, disgusts,
endurances of all kinds: what cannot one undertake so long as one has
that cordial at one's heart? When the endurance and the labour remain,
and the cordial is gone, it is a changed world into which the surprised
soul enters. This was what had happened to Nettie. Nobody suspected the
sudden change which had passed upon everything. The only individual in
the world who could have divined it, had persuaded himself in a flush of
anger and mortification that she did not care. He consoled himself by
elaborate avoidance of that road which led past St Roque's--by bows of
elaborate politeness when he encountered her anywhere in the streets of
Carlingford--by taking a sudden plunge into such society as was open
to him in the town, and devoting himself to Miss Marjoribanks, the old
physician's daughter. Nettie was not moved by these demonstrations,
which showed her sway still undiminished over the doctor's angry and
jealous heart. She did not regard the petulant shows of pretended
indifference by which a more ex