There was no light in Lottie’s room; nothing but the faint starlight outside, and as much of the familiar glimmer of the few feeble lamps in the Dean’s Walk as could get in through her small window. How is it that so small a bit of space, such four straight walls, should hold in such a throbbing, palpitating, agitated being, with projects wide enough and fury hot enough to burst them like a child’s toy? It was in her to have torn her hair or anything that came in the way of her fevered hands; to have filled the air with cries; to have filled the whole world with her protest against the intolerable shame and wretchedness which they were trying to force upon her thoughts! But she only threw herself on her bed in the dark and silence, letting no sound or movement betray her. She was not prostrated as by unkindness, or stung by reproach; but wounded, shamed, desecrated--the very sanctity of her dreams turned into a horror to her. And Law gone against her--Law gone over to the other side! CHAPTER XVI. THE SIGNOR’S HOUSEHOLD. The Despard family became a great centre of interest to many people both within and without the Abbey precincts at this period of their history. Without any doing, so to speak, of theirs, Fate mixed them up both with the great and the small, so that their proceedings moved a great many circles of thought and feeling beyond that in which they themselves stood. We have said without any doing of theirs--but this, perhaps, is true only in respect to Lottie, who took no steps consciously to produce the _rapprochement_ which had taken place so strangely between the heaven of the Deanery and the earth of the Lodges. She had not done anything to recommend herself to Lady Caroline or Lady Caroline’s nephew. And yet with both she had become an important “factor,” to use a fashionable term, in the immediate concerns of life. The Captain was not so innocent of purpose in the commotion he had begun to make. But still he had not calculated upon the interest that would be excited by his proceedings. The community at St. Michael’s was quiet and had little to rouse its interest. Sometimes a Canon would be translated to a higher and a better stall--sometimes an old Chevalier would die and be replaced by another veteran not much less old than he--sometimes a son would “go wrong” and create a great deal of whispered communication and shaking of heads. At the present time there were no daughters to marry except Lottie, so that the pleasanter strain of possibility was little thought of. All this made it very inspiring, very agitating to the dwellers round the Abbey, when a family within the precincts gave them so much to think about. A girl likely to make a very good match in a romantic way: a man likely to make a very bad one, in a way which might have been quite as romantic had it not been on the wrong side, such as would debase, not exalt his class; these two probabilities coming together had a great effect upon the popular mind.