of him. She supposed that he meant to spend some time in North Dormer.
He had said he was looking up the old houses in the neighbourhood; and
though she was not very clear as to his purpose, or as to why anyone
should look for old houses, when they lay in wait for one on every
roadside, she understood that he needed the help of books, and resolved
to hunt up the next day the volume she had failed to find, and any
others that seemed related to the subject.

Never had her ignorance of life and literature so weighed on her as in
reliving the short scene of her discomfiture. "It's no use trying to be
anything in this place," she muttered to her pillow; and she shrivelled
at the vision of vague metropolises, shining super-Nettletons,
where girls in better clothes than Belle Balch's talked fluently of
architecture to young men with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then she
remembered his sudden pause when he had come close to the desk and had
his first look at her. The sight had made him forget what he was going
to say; she recalled the change in his face, and jumping up she ran over
the bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a candle, and
lifted it to the square of looking-glass on the white-washed wall. Her
small face, usually so darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb
of light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed deeper and larger
than by day. Perhaps after all it was a mistake to wish they were blue.
A clumsy band and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the
throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bride
in low-necked satin, walking down an aisle with Lucius Harney. He would
kiss her as they left the church.... She put down the candle and covered
her face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At that moment she
heard Mr. Royall's step as he came up the stairs to bed, and a fierce
revulsion of feeling swept over her. Until then she had merely despised
him; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became to her a