So that when Cara withdrew, wounded, and sad, and angry at the position in which she found herself, Mrs. Meredith made no effort to call her from her retirement. She was full of many reflections and questions of her own--and surely it was the part of the children to inform her of everything, to seek her consent, to conciliate her, not hers to do all this to them. As for Edward he went no more to the house in which he had spent so many happy hours. Looking back at them now, how happy they seemed! No cloud seemed to have been on his sky when he sat there by the light of Cara’s lamp, reading to her, seeing her through all his reading, feeling the charm of her presence. In reality they had been full of very mingled pleasure, and often the bitterness involved had overbalanced the sweetness; but he did not remember that now that they were past--they seemed to have been all happiness, a happiness lost for ever. He made up for the loss, which seemed to have impoverished his whole life, by work. Fortunately he had lost ground which had to be recovered now, if he was to carry out his original intention about India--and he gave himself up to this with something like passion. All the evening through, in those hours which he used to spend with Cara, he worked, deadening himself, stupefying himself with this like a narcotic, exciting his brain to take the part of a counter-irritant against his heart. Now and then, if the poor young fellow paused for a moment, a sudden softness would steal over him, a recollection of the room next door with Miss Cherry counting her stitches on the other side of the fire--and the soft rose-reflection on Cara’s white dress. How could he defend himself against these remembrances? All at once, while his eyes were fixed on his book, this scene would come before him, and lines of exasperating verse would tingle through him--reminding him of Elaine, and how she ‘loved him with that love that was her doom.’ Thus some malicious spirit played upon the boy-- I loved you and my love had no return, And therefore my true love has been my death.