Meanwhile, however, she could gain no news of the Earl of Ilfracombe, her own act of supposed suicide having put the possibility of hearing of him out of her reach. She could not come in contact with him again without her former position in his household being made known. For this reason, as long as she remained with her parents, Nell saw no chance of seeing him. And it was only at times that she desired it. At others, she felt as if the sight of her perfidious lover would kill her--as if she would run miles the other way sooner than encounter him; and these were the despairing moments, when she wept till she was nearly blind, and made her mother rather impatient, because she would not confess what ailed her, nor say what she wanted. The poor girl was passing through the gates of hell, through which most of us have to pass during our lifetime, in which whoever enters must leave Hope behind, for the portals are so dark and gloomy that Hope could not exist there. Some women will get over a disappointment like this in a reasonable time; some never get over it at all; and Nell Llewellyn was one of the latter. Her very soul had entered into her love for Lord Ilfracombe, and she could not disentangle it. It had not been an ordinary love with which she had regarded him, but an ardent worship--such worship as a devotee renders to the God of his religion. I do not say that such women never love again, but they never forget the first love, which is ready to revive at the first opportunity, and which lives with them all through the exercise of the second, glorifying it, as it were, by the halo thrown over it from the past. Nell was still in a state of hopeless collapse. She had not got over the news of Ilfracombe’s marriage in the slightest degree. She was perfectly aware that he had shut the gates of Paradise between them for evermore; yet she often experienced this feverish anxiety to learn from his own lips in what light he regarded their separation. Meanwhile her conscience occasionally accused her of not having behaved as kindly as she might to Hugh Owen--sometimes gave her a sickening qualm also, as she remembered she had parted with her cherished secret to a man who had apparently quarrelled with her ever since. He had assured her it was safe with him, but Nell felt that he despised her for the confession she had made, and might not his contempt lead him to forget his promise? She wanted further assurance that he would be faithful and true. She went over to the Dale Farm far oftener than she had been wont to do (which Hetty accepted entirely as a compliment to her baby), in the hope of encountering him; but he always managed to slink away before she reached the house, or to have some excuse for leaving directly afterwards.