Mr. Decies, again and again. He was faithful--I see it
now. He cared not if I had neither name nor fortune; he held fast to
his proposals. And I? Oh, I was absorbed--I was universally
defiant--I did not do him justice in the bitterness I did not realise.
I thought he was constant only out of honour and pity, and I did not
choose to open my heart to understand his pleadings or accept them as
earnest--I was harsh. Oh, how little one knows what one is doing! Too
proud to be grateful--that was actually my case. I was enamoured of the
blue-spectacle plan; I had romances of watching Alured day and night,
and pouring away dangerous draughts. The very fancy, I see now, was
playing with edged tools; I feel as if my imagination had put the
possibility into the very air.

Once indeed--when Jaquetta had been telling me she did not understand
my unkindness; and observed that, even for Alured's sake, she could not
see why I did not accept--I did begin to regard him as a possible
protector for the boy. But no; the blue spectacles would be the more
assiduous guardian, said my foolish fancy.

Before I had thought it over into sense or reason, Fulk came back from
Paris. He had not been really crushed till now. He was white, and
silent, and resolute, and very gentle; all excitement of manner gone.
He did not say one word, but we knew it was all over with him, and that
he could not have had one scrap of comfort or hope.

Nor had he, though even to me he told nothing, till we were together in
the dark one evening, much later. He did insist upon seeing Emily; but
her mother would not leave her, or take her eyes off her, and the timid
thing did nothing but sob and cry, in utter helplessness and shame, and
never even gave him a look.

It was not the being neglected and cast off that he felt as such a
wrong, to both himself and Emily, but the being drawn on with false
hopes and promises to expect that she was to belong to him, after all;
and he was cruelly disappointed that Emily had not energy to cling to
him--he had made so sure of her.

Bertram and Jaquetta had expected all along that he would be the more
eager to be off to the Antipodes when everything was swept away from
him here, and he did sit after dinner talking it over in a
business-like way, while Bertram gave him all the information he had
been collecting in his absence.

I would not listen. I was determined against going away from my
charge; I had rather have been