I had put the girl utterly out of my mind. She had become nothing, and less than nothing, in the tragic sequence of events. Now, all in a moment, I was moved to reconsider her--wonderingly, even. I thought her face was pale--white, with a sort of pathetic sickness which follows after much crying; and I was sorry for her, sorry, with a sudden strange turmoil of the heart, which spoke most, I think, of sorrow for myself. What was she to me? Nothing. I had taken brutal pains, indeed, to convince her of the fact; and she must surely feel convinced at last, and hold herself acquitted of any further obligations to me. Yet, is it not human nature to view with jealousy another’s fond appreciation of the thing we have held too cheap for our own use? The value of it, it may be, has never struck us until we have lost it. I don’t mean to say that I had arrived, already and at once, at that extravagant pitch of regret; but I was certainly awake, and suddenly, to points of attraction about the girl which had never appealed to me before. Her hair grew very prettily on her forehead, dividing from it in wings of the softest fawn. There was an unspoiled frankness in her face, for all its temptation to chartered coquetry, and her eyes had grown honest. She had developed into a little being quite remote from my early conception of her. Her complexion was of an unsoiled purity, just the natural maturing of pink-skinned babydom, when its cheeks have ripened to a contour and moulded themselves to a meaning. Her lips were always as red as if a Cupid had just left kissing them, and there was an attractive robin note in her voice, whether it spoke or laughed. Now, noting all this, a quick sharp feeling as of loss, as of an utter loneliness never until this moment fully realised, smote into me. What possible sympathy, in all this turmoil of my hates and loves and grievances, had I willingly foregone! But it was of no use: I _had_ rejected it, and I must take the consequences. She was even at this moment ostentatiously ignoring me, and I saw that my hold on her was gone. What did I care? Why should I? Yet, I confess, to see these gentle feminine spirits leagued together in revolt against my brutality wounded me smartly. I had thought myself their master, and I was master of nothing but their fear. Bill Sikes could better me there. Something gained from that consciousness--call it what you will--was promising to educate me finely. Not once during the dinner did either of the ladies speak to me. I chose bitterly to put their neglect down to the presumption of a “by-blow” in assuming a claim on their notice. I was glad, though with an impotent rage of jealousy, when they rose and left me alone with my stepfather.