She had been very angry with him;--and the more so because she had
such cause to be angry with herself;--with her own lack of judgment,
her own ignorance of the man's character, her own folly with
reference to her daughter. She had never asked herself whether she
loved Fitzgerald--had never done so till now. But now she knew that
the sharpest blow she had received that day was the assurance that
he was indifferent to herself.

She had never thought herself too old to be on an equality with
him,--on such an equality in point of age as men and women feel when
they learn to love each other; and therefore it had not occurred to
her that he could regard her daughter as other than a child. To Lady
Desmond, Clara was a child; how then could she be more to him? And
yet now it was too plain that he had looked on Clara as a woman. In
what light then must he have thought of that woman's mother? And so,
with saddened heart, but subdued anger, she continued to gaze
through the window till all without was dusk and dark.

There can be to a woman no remembrance of age so strong as that of
seeing a daughter go forth to the world a married woman. If that
does not tell the mother that the time of her own youth has passed
away, nothing will ever bring the tale home. It had not quite come
to this with Lady Desmond;--Clara was not going forth to the world
as a married woman. But here was one now who had judged her as fit
to be so taken; and this one was the very man of all others in whose
estimation Lady Desmond would have wished to drop a few of the years
that encumbered her.

She was not, however, a weak woman, and so she performed her task.