to be. She ought to have known, she
ought to have thought, she ought to have foreseen. She of all persons
in the world ought to have been careful with young men who believed
her to be of their own class. Contrition and woe took possession of
Priscilla's soul. She knew it was true that she could not help
existing, but she knew besides, far back in a remote and seldom
investigated corner of her mind, a corner on which she did not care to
turn the light of careful criticism, that she ought not to be existing
in Symford. It was because she was there, out of her proper sphere, in
a place she had no business to be in at all, that these strange and
heart-wringing scenes with young men occurred. And Fritzing would
notice her red eyes and ask what had happened; and here within two
days was a second story to be told of a young man unintentionally
hurried to his doom. Would Fritzing be angry? She never knew
beforehand. Would he, only remembering she was grand ducal, regard it
as an insult and want to fight Tussie? The vision of poor Tussie,
weak, fevered, embedded in pillows, swathed in flannel, receiving
bloodthirsty messages of defiance from Fritzing upset her into more
tears. Fritzing, she felt at that moment, was a trial. He burdened her
with his gigantic efforts to keep her from burdens. He burdened her
with his inflated notions of how burdenless she ought to be. He was
admirable, unselfish, devoted; but she felt it was possible to be too
admirable, too unselfish, too devoted. In a word Priscilla's mind
was in a state of upheaval, and the only ray of light she saw
anywhere--and never was ray more watery--was that Tussie, for the
moment at least, was content. The attitude of his mother, on the
other hand, was distressing and disturbing. There had been no more My
dears and other kind ways. She had watched her crying on the stairs in
stony silence, had gone down with her to the door in stony silence,
and just at the last had said in an unmistakably stony voice, "All
this is very cruel."

Priscilla was overwhelmed by the difficulties of life. The world was
too much with her, she felt, a very great deal too much. She sent the
Shuttleworth carriage away at the entrance to the village and went in
to sit with Mrs. Jones a little, so that her eyes might lose their
redness before she faced Fritzing; and Mrs. Jones was so glad to see
her, so full of praises of her unselfish goodness in coming in, that
once again Priscilla was forced to