Almost worse than all the rest; suppose the envelope was recovered, and it was found that she was indeed an heiress, still to her the world would never again be what it was; in her heart of hearts she knew it; it was that knowledge which, that Sunday, weighed on her so heavily. During the last few days disillusions had come to her from every quarter. Whatever the future might have in store for her the attitude taken up by the Earl and Countess of Mountdennis was one which she never could forget. That her position as an heiress had heightened her charms in their eyes she had known; but she had supposed that they had cared for her a little for herself. That bubble was blown. Common decency, it seemed to her, would have bade them extend to her at least some show of sympathy. Plainly such an idea had not occurred to them. All they had done was to revile her for having lost everything she valued most, father, home, all; as if the fault was hers, and she had been engaged in a conspiracy to bring about her own destruction; they had made it so hideously clear that, from the first, and all along, they had only thought of her as a representative of so many pounds, shillings and pence; not a creature of flesh and blood, who was one day to stand to them in the place of a daughter, to be loved and cherished by their son. Though to-morrow millions were to come tumbling into her lap her lovers' parents could never now be what she had once hoped they would become; with their own hands they had rent into nothing the veil of illusion through which she had seen them.