Lady Mitford's composure had been shaken by her interview with Sir Laurence Alsager more rudely than by any of the events which had succeeded each other with such rapidity in the course of the short but troublous time since her marriage. She had reckoned upon his friendship to support and his society to cheer her, and now they must be relinquished. There could be no doubt, no hesitation about that; and she did not doubt or hesitate, but she suffered, as such keenly sensitive and highly-principled natures can suffer, whose only possible course is to do the right thing, and pay, without having counted, the cost. All the loneliness, all the dreariness of her lot came on her foreboding spirit, as she sat alone in her dressing-room, two days after her parting interview with Sir Laurence. She had been thinking of the day at Redmoor when their first confidence had been interchanged; she had been remembering his counsel, and taking herself to task for having neglected it, or, at any rate, for not having tried more earnestly and more persistently to follow it. "I must have been to blame in some degree," she thought; "I ought to have tried to please him more; but--" and then she sighed--"I had been used to please him without trying, and it is hard to realize the change; and before one does realize it, it is too late. I wonder if there is any case in which it would not be too late from the first; I wonder if any woman in the world ever yet succeeded in retaining or recovering the heart of any man when it had once in the least strayed from her. I don't grieve for myself now,--I cannot; but I blame myself. I might have tried--no doubt I should have failed; but still I might have tried. I might have asserted myself from the moment that they met at Redmoor, and I saw her clasp his hand as she did. But what is the use of asserting oneself, of putting one's position, one's conventional rights, against the perverted strength of a man's will? No, no; there is no security where the question is one of feeling; in the insecure holding of love we are but tenants-at-will."