Janet had got a tremendous lesson, such a lesson as not one foolish girl in a million is ever exposed to: and all her lighter feelings--the mischievous pleasure of taking another woman’s lover from her, which is so often merely a piece of fun to an unthinking girl; the excitement of being made love to; the fascination of contact with the first man who had ventured to seize upon her attention, to take her interest for granted, to draw her, as it were, into the current of his own being--all these sensations had died in the horror with which that sudden murderous assault had filled her, and the double horror of being mixed up in it, held up before the world as the cause, with a stigma upon her forever. Janet had liked to amuse herself all her life, and it was irresistible to triumph over the composed and self-confident Gussy, to take her lover from her, and watch sarcastically behind backs the self-exposure of the victim, and laugh internally, though never without a half shame, at the “silliness,” which wounded Julia’s sharp perception, in her sister. Julia saw it as well as Janet, though she did not know the cause. And she had liked the bold love-making, the wicked looks aside which had at once placed her on a platform above Gussy; those confidences which Meredith had begun to make to her from the first, and which had at once established a secret link between them. He had been the interest and amusement of the dull life which Janet had never had time to get tired of, so interesting was the drama he had played for her and made her play; and she had liked to be made love to in that bold, presumptuous way. There was something piquant in it, especially in contrast with the clumsy devotion of Dolff. It had carried her at last a little out of her own control, in the hurrying sensations of the night of the ball: and the touch of jealousy after, and the complication of the events of that night--of the discovery of the papers which she was compelled to send him, and the meeting she was compelled to grant him for the sake of clearing up that mystery--had all added an impetus to the downward stream upon which Janet was going.