But, whatever the cause, Joan had fallen a victim to this fate, and now it mastered her, body and mind and soul. She had never cared for any one before, and on Henry she let loose the pent-up affections of a lifetime. No breath of passion had ever moved her, and now a look from his eyes or a touch of his hand stirred all the fibres of her nature as the wind stirs every leaf upon a tree. He was her darling, her desire. Till she had learnt to love him she had not known the powers and the possibilities of life, and if she could win his love she would even have been willing to pay for it at the price of her own death. The approach of such an infatuation would have terrified most girls: they would have crushed it, or put themselves beyond its reach before it took hold of them. But then the majority of young English women, even of those who belong to the humbler walks of life, do not stand by their own strength alone. Either they have an inherited sense of the proprieties that amounts almost to an instinct, or they possess strong religious principles, or there are those about them who guide and restrain any dangerous tendency in their natures. At the very least they are afraid of losing the respect and affection of their friends and relatives, and of becoming a mark for the sneers and scandal of the world in which they move. In Joan’s case these influences were for the most part lacking. From childhood she had lived beneath the shadow of a shame that, in some degree, had withered her moral sense; no father or mother gave her their tender guidance, and of religion she had been taught so little that, though she conformed to its outward ceremonies, it could not be said to have any real part in her life. Relatives she had none except her harsh and coarse-minded aunt; her few friends made at a middle-class school were now lost to her, for with the girls of her own rank in the village she would not associate, and those of better standing either did, or affected to look down upon her. In short, her character was compounded of potentialities for good and evil; she was sweet and strong-natured and faithful, but she had not learned that these qualities are of little avail to bring about the happiness or moral well-being of her who owns them, unless they are dominated by a sense of duty. Having such a sense, the best of us are liable to error in this direction or in that; wanting it, we must indeed be favoured if we escape disaster among the many temptations of life. It was Joan’s misfortune rather than her fault, for she was the victim of her circumstances and not of any innate depravity, that she lacked this controlling power, and in this defenceless state found herself suddenly exposed to the fiercest temptation that can assail a woman of her character and gifts, the temptation to give way to a love which, if it did not end in empty misery, could only bring shame upon herself and ceaseless trouble and remorse to its object.