When John took my hand with just his old loving pressure, the first wave of despair broke over me. "Get over it?" I asked myself; but that was all. I believed that John was sitting by Rachel, but I did not see the dinner-table, nor the people sitting at it. They thought I was shy or proud, and did not trouble me with conversation. A sound was in my ears, which I thought was like the rushing of a storm in an Indian forest. All my life lay before me like a blot of ink on a bright page. Why must I give trouble, and carry a sore heart? Why was I left behind to come to Hillsbro'? Why did not my father and mother take me with them that I might have died of their fever and been buried in their Indian grave? But how Rachel laughed. All the evening she was the most brilliant, beautiful, witty creature that ever enlivened a company. CHAPTER VIII. My children, when I sat that night over the embers of my dying fire in my chamber at Hillsbro' Hall, whilst every one else was asleep, there has never been a more desolate creature in the world than I felt myself to be. I had behaved all the evening very meekly and quietly, keeping out of John's way, accepting Rachel's attentions, watching and admiring her with a dull kind of fascination. I remember observing absently, in a mirror at the other end of the room, the white pensive face of a young girl sitting very still in a corner, rapt in thought or pain. I wondered whether she was sick or in trouble; but afterwards I found by accident that I had been speculating about myself. A little chill smile came to my lips at this discovery; but I felt hardly any surprise at seeing myself thus so different from what I had ever been before. The world had changed, and I with it, since the fall of twilight in the gallery. Rachel sang and the room applauded; people danced and Rachel amongst them; young gentlemen were introduced to me, and I told them "I don't dance" with my cold lips. There was an agonising pressure on my senses, of sound, light, perfume. I thought it was these things that gave the pain, while from my heart, which seemed perfectly still, came forth at intervals the repetition "I will get over it, I will get over it." John found me out, and said, quite startled, "What is the matter with you, Margery?" I complained of "my head," and drew back within the shelter of a curtain. "Margery, my dearest, you are ill," he said, and then the flood-gates of bitterness opened in my heart. How long was he going to act a cruel lie to me? I said, "I am ill; I must go to bed." He followed me out of the room, questioned me anxiously, wrapped me in a shawl, stood at the foot of the stairs watching till I passed out of sight; all as if he had still loved me.