And Sappha listened and ate her bread to this sorrowful news. Only her colourless face revealed her suffering at that moment; but it showed itself in various ways after this certainty had been accepted. One of the most pronounced forms it took was a feeling of intense dislike and anger towards Annette. She would not go to Annette’s house, nor would she see her if she called at the Bowling Green house. Her reasons were sufficient to herself, and Mrs. Bloommaert thought her daughter justified in her conduct. Not yet could she ask Sappha to forgive; not while her eyes held that look of pain and despair, and her whole manner that of one standing smitten and dismayed before a barrier she could not cross. As a matter of course, the unhappy Sappha passed her days “going quietly,” almost hopelessly, for there was in her grief that element of tragic fatality, that sense of Fate shaping life by the most trivial things, that renders men and women despairing. Never before had she given sway to a temper so unreasonable, so impetuous, so passionately hasty. And surely not without the co-operation of the stars had Annette called just at that early hour in the morning--Annette, jealous, miserable, ill-tempered, envious, full of suspicions, and delighting in making misery for others as well as herself. Then, unfortunately, Mrs. Bloommaert was ill; and Annette, unrestrained by her presence, while Sappha’s sympathies had been called on all night long and her temper unconsciously frayed and irritated by her inability to prevent her mother’s suffering. Oh, every trivial thing had been against her, even to the small event of her going to the back parlour after breakfast! For had she remained, as was her usual custom, in front of the house, she would have seen Annette’s interview with her father, and been prepared for whatever she might say.