Oh, the pity!
the pity!"
Lilian let her hands fall and sat staring before her.
She felt as though cast out into a terrible solitude. Mrs. Wade's
voice came from a distance; and it was not a voice of true sympathy,
but of veiled upbraiding. Unspeakably remote was the image of the
man she loved, and he moved still away from her. A cloud of pain
fell between her and all the kindly world.
In these nights of sleepless misery she had thought of her old home.
The relatives from whom she was for ever parted--her sister, her
kind old aunt--looked at her with reproachful eyes; and now, in
anguish which bordered upon delirium, it was they alone who seemed
real to her; all her recent life had become a vague suffering, a
confused consciousness of desire and terror. Her childhood returned;
she saw her parents and heard them talk. A longing for the peace and
love of those dead days rent her heart.
She could neither speak nor move. Torture born in the brain throbbed
through every part of her body. But worse was that ghastly sense of
utter loneliness, of being forsaken by human sympathy. The cloud
about her thickened; it muffled light and sound, and began to
obscure even her memories.
For a long time Mrs. Wade had sat silent. At length she rose,
glanced at Lilian, and, without speaking left the room.
She went upstairs and into her bed-chamber, and here stood for a few
minutes in the dark, purposeless.
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