"I only understand that you are a very foolish person," Lady Gwendoline answered, coldly; "and I have been extremely foolish to trouble myself about you. I considered it my duty to do what I have done, and I wash my hands henceforward of you and your affairs. Pray go your own way, and do not fear any further interference from me. It is quite impossible that I can have the smallest association with my cousin's mistress." She hurled the cruel word at the Doctor's Wife, and departed with a sound of silken rustling in the narrow passage. Isabel heard the carriage drive away, and then flung herself down upon her knees, to sob and lament her cruel destiny. That last word had stung her to the very heart. It took all the poetry out of her life; it brought before her, in its fullest significance, the sense of her position. If she met Roland under Lord Thurston's oak,--if she walked with him in the meadows that his footsteps beautified into the smooth lawns of Paradise,--people, vulgar, ignorant people, utterly unable to comprehend her or her love, would say that she was his mistress. His mistress! To what people she had heard that word applied! And Beatrice Portinari, and Viola, and Leila, and Gulnare, and Zelica, what of them? The visions of all those lovely and shining creatures arose before her; and beside them, in letters of fire, blazed the odious word that transformed her fond platonic worship, her sentimental girlish idolatry, into a shame and disgrace. "I will see him to-morrow and say farewell to him," she thought. "I will bid him good-bye for ever and ever, though my heart should break,--ah, how I hope it may, as I say the bitter word!--and never, never will see him again. I know now what he meant by shame and humiliation; I can understand all he said now." * * * * * Mrs. Gilbert had another of her headaches that evening, and poor George was obliged to dine alone. He went up-stairs once or twice in the course of the evening to see his wife, and found her lying very quietly in the dimly-lighted room with her face turned to the wall. She held out her hand to him as he bent over her, and pressed his broad palm with her feverish fingers. "I'm afraid I've been neglectful of you sometimes, George," she said; "but I won't be so again. I won't go out for those long walks, and keep you waiting for dinner; and if you would like a set of new shirts made--you said the other day that yours were nearly worn out--I should like to make them for you myself. I used to help to make the shirts for my brothers, and I don't think I should pucker so much now; and, oh, George, Mrs. Jeffson was talking of your poor mother to-day, and I want you to tell me what it was she died of." Mr. Gilbert patted his wife's hand approvingly, and laid it gently down on the coverlet.