suffered as I suffered, during that round of visits, under the desire to
yawn and the effort to suppress it? Is there any sympathetic soul who can
understand me, when I say that I would have given a hundred pounds for a
gag, and for the privilege of using it to stop my stepmother's pleasant
chat in the carriage, following on our friends' pleasant chat in the
drawing-room? Finally, when we got home, and when Mrs. Roylake kindly
promised me another round of visits, and more charming people in the
neighborhood to see, will any good Christian forgive me, if I own that I
took advantage of being alone to damn the neighborhood, and to feel
relieved by it?

Now that I was no longer obliged to listen to polite strangers, my
thoughts reverted to Cristel, and to the suspicions that she had roused
in me.

Recovering its influence, in the interval that had passed, my better
nature sharply reproached me. I had presumed to blame Cristel, with
nothing to justify me but my own perverted view of her motives. How did I
know that she had not opened that door, and gone to that side of the
cottage, with a perfectly harmless object in view? I was really anxious,
if I could find the right way to do it, to make amends for an act of
injustice of which I felt ashamed. If I am asked why I was as eager to
set myself right with a miller's daughter, as if she had been a young
lady in the higher ranks of life, I can only reply that no such view of
our relative positions as this ever occurred to me. A strange state of
mind, no doubt. What was the right explanation of it?

The right explanation presented itself at a later time, when troubles had
quickened my intellect, and when I could estimate the powerful influence
of circumstances at its true value.