seemed to create and endear a more trustful belief in my skill. But the
profession I had once so enthusiastically loved became to me wearisome,
insipid, distasteful; the kindness heaped on me gave no comfort,--it but
brought before me more vividly the conviction that it came too late to
avail me: it could not restore to me the mind, the love, the life of my
life, which lay dark and shattered in the brain of my guileless Lilian.
Secretly I felt a sullen resentment. I knew that to the crowd the
resentment was unjust. The world itself is but an appearance; who can
blame it if appearances guide its laws? But to those who had been
detached from the crowd by the professions of friendship,--those who, when
the slander was yet new, and might have been awed into silence had they
stood by my side,--to the pressure of their hands, now, I had no response.

Against Mrs. Poyntz, above all others, I bore a remembrance of unrelaxed,
unmitigable indignation. Her schemes for her daughter's marriage had
triumphed: Jane was Mrs. Ashleigh Sumner. Her mind was, perhaps, softened
now that the object which had sharpened its worldly faculties was
accomplished: but in vain, on first hearing of my affliction, had this
she-Machiavel owned a humane remorse, and, with all her keen comprehension
of each facility that circumstances gave to her will, availed herself of
the general compassion to strengthen the popular reaction in favour of
Lilian's assaulted honour; in vain had she written to me with a gentleness
of sympathy foreign to her habitual characteristics; in vain besought me
to call on her; in vain waylaid and accosted me with a humility that
almost implored forgiveness. I vouchsafed no reproach, but I could imply
no pardon. I put between her and my great sorrow the impenetrable wall of
my freezing silence.

One word of hers at the time that I had so pathetically besought her aid,
and the parrot-flock that repeated her very whisper in noisy shrillness