Sometimes she tried to forget, and almost fancied that she succeeded, almost believed that her conscience was quite hardened. Then something would take place--a trivial circumstance--one of Doreen's idle shafts, which set her nerves jarring, and the painful truth forced itself upon her that there are tender spots on the most seared of consciences. She had wild accesses of rage within the secrecy of her own chamber, in that my lord who simpered on the wall should have wrecked her life so utterly. She took refuge in religion, loathing the faith of the surviving participator in her secret as an outlet for surging hate and bitterness. She tried to take refuge from her own trouble by smoothing that of others, but even in this--the last resource of those who see life through jaundiced spectacles--she found little consolation, for the trouble which she soothed was at least open and laid bare. And so the distinct working of a double consciousness--one for good and one for evil at the same time--(which we all feel within us) became unusually evident in Lady Glandore, urging her at one moment to a rash act for which she was gnawed by deep remorse the next. May this account for the growing dislike which she nourished for her second son, while she fed the poor with soup and wrapped their limbs in flannel? Perhaps it was the singular contradictions of her character which induced Lord Clare to like and to respect her so much, and which permitted him at the same time to make that disgraceful suggestion without fear of exclusion from the Abbey, anent Tone's letter.