She on whom the blow had fallen at a moment when she was unprepared for it, when a faint sense of security had begun to steal over her in spite of herself, had received it _en plein cœur_, as the French say. We have no word which expresses so well the unexpected, unmitigated shock. She had said to herself, like the captive king in the Bible, that the bitterness of death was past, and had gone, like that poor prince, “delicately,” with undefended bosom, and heart hushed out of its first alarms, to meet her fate. The blow had gone through her very flesh, rending every delicate tissue before she had time to think. It does not even seem a metaphor to say that it broke her heart, or, rather, cut the tender structure sheer in two, leaving it bleeding, quivering, in her bosom. She was not a woman to faint or die at a stroke. She took the torture silently, without being vanquished by it. When nature is strong within us, and the force of life great, there is no pang spared. And while in one sense it was true that for the moment she expected nothing, the instantly following sensation in Madam’s mind was that she had known all along what was going to happen to her, and that it had never been but certain that this must come. Even the details of the scene seemed familiar. She had always known that some time or other these men would look at her so, would say just those words to her, and that she would stand and bear it all, a victim appointed from the beginning. In the greater miseries of life it happens often that the catastrophe, however unexpected, bears, when it comes, a familiar air, as of a thing which has been mysteriously rehearsed in our consciousness all our lives. After the first shock, her mind sprang with a bound to those immediate attempts to find a way of existence on the other side of the impossible, which was the first impulse of the vigorous soul. She said little even to Jane until the dreary afternoon was over, the dinner, with its horrible formulas, and she had said what was really her farewell to everything at Highcourt. Then, when the time approached for the meeting in the park, she began to prepare for going out with a solemnity which startled her faithful attendant. She took from her desk a sum which she had kept in reserve (who can tell for what possibility?), and dressed herself carefully, not in her new mourning, with all its crape, but in simple black from head to foot. She always had worn a great deal of black lace; it had been her favorite costume always. She enveloped herself in a great veil which would have fallen almost to her feet had it been unfolded, doing everything for herself, seeking the things she wanted in her drawers with a silent diligence which Jane watched with consternation. At last the maid could restrain herself no longer. “Am I to do nothing for you?” she cried, with anguish. “And, oh! where are you going? What are you doing? There’s something more than I thought.”