She dried her eyes with great determination, whereupon another thought came immediately to fill them again with tears. “What shall I do to-morrow morning? Each day I have thought, ‘Perhaps he will speak to-day!’ and now I know he won’t, unless I let him see in some way--but I won’t! I won’t! I won’t! What an idiot I am! I feel like the foolish woman who plucks down her house with her own hands. Oh, why has Georgie got everything and I nothing? But I have, of course. I have got Dick back again just as much as she has, and I suppose I don’t deserve anything more. But I don’t know why this particularly horrible thing should happen to me. It’s not as if I had ever led any one on--except poor Eustace. I did really flirt with him at first, so I suppose this is my punishment. If he knew he would say it was only just. But the rest--why, Captain Winlock or Mr Beltring or Captain Woodworth would propose to-morrow if I held up my little finger. I could have any of them I liked--except the right one. It would serve him right if I flirted with one of them now, and made him jealous--” she grew suddenly cheerful, for the idea pleased her. “I should like to make him miserable a little, after the way he has treated me, and I could do it so splendidly. But I suppose he was rather miserable when I was engaged to Eustace, and it would be distinctly hard on the other man. I never thought I was such a wretch,” with a repentant sigh, “but it was a temptation for the moment. And to think that I should be going on in this way when I ought to remember nothing but that Dick’s alive! I’m a perfect beast, and I _will_ be glad. I’ll try and think only of Georgie, and perhaps I shan’t feel quite so miserable then. Oh dear, I wish there was some way of letting people know you were sorry without giving in!”