CHAPTER XIX.

RANKLING ARROWS.


Elizabeth was alone at last, that is, as much as a thought pursuing like
a personality lets one be alone. When she crossed her room in the
silence it was a relief to hear no voices, not to be obliged to answer
when she had not listened and was afraid lest she should not answer
rightly. Yet the events of the last few hours, the stray words as they
seemed to her that she had heard, the faces that had been before her
kept moving on before her now and repeating themselves faintly for a
little time, just as one whose head is throbbing with some continued
sound still hears it through all his pulses, even when he has gone out
of reach of the reality. She seemed to be driving home with Lady Dacre's
face full of tenderness opposite her. The sympathy had been almost too
much for Elizabeth, her eyes had not met the compassionate glances. Sir
Temple had conversed for three; he had been very kind, too, but the
kindness hurt her, for she knew they pitied her.

Elizabeth had an humble way with her sometimes, and, as has been said,
her own achievements seemed to her worthless. She had nothing of that
blatant quality, vanity, which claims from others and by reason of its
arrogance gets to be called pride; but her dignity strove above
everything to be sufficient for itself. Such a spirit shrinks from
claiming the appreciation it hungers for, shrinks back into itself,
and passes for shyness, or humility, or anything but what it is, that
supreme pride that seeks from the world its highest, the allegiance of
love, in return for its own love of what is true and grand. Finding a
denial in those it meets, it draws away in a silence that to people who