Her mother had turned against her. "Why would she go getting a bad name
from every one, and driving away customers?" The preachers, who were (as
is too common in West-country villages) narrow, ignorant, and somewhat
unscrupulous men, turned against her. They had considered the cholera,
if it was to come, as so much spiritual capital for themselves; an
occasion which they could "improve" into a sensation, perhaps a
"revival;" and to explain it upon mere physical causes was to rob them
of their harvest. Coarse viragos went even farther still, and dared to
ask her "whether it was the curate or the doctor she was setting her cap
at: for she never had anything in her mouth now but what they had said?"
And those words went through her heart like a sword. Was she
disinterested? Was not love for Thurnall, the wish to please him,
mingling with all her earnestness? And again, was not self-love mingling
with it? and mingling, too, with the disappointment, even indignation,
which she felt at having failed? Ah--what hitherto hidden spots of
self-conceit, vanity, pharisaic pride, that bitter trial laid bare, or
seemed to lay, till she learned to thank her unseen Guide even for it!

Perhaps she had more reason to be thankful for her humiliation than she
could suspect, with her narrow knowledge of the world. Perhaps that
sudden downfall of her fancied queenship was needed, to shut her out,
once and for all, from that downward path of spiritual intoxication,
followed by spiritual knavery, which, as has been hinted, was but too
easy for her.

But meanwhile the whole thing was but a fresh misery. To bear the burden
of Cassandra day and night, seeing in fancy--which yet was truth--the
black shadow of death hanging over that doomed place; to dream of whom
it might sweep off;--perhaps, worst of all, her mother, unconfessed and
impenitent!