It is hoped that the reader need hardly be informed that Hetta Carbury was a very miserable¹ young woman as soon as she decided² that duty compelled her to divide herself altogether from Paul Montague. I think that she was irrational³; but to her it seemed that the offence against herself — the offence against her own dignity as a woman — was too great to be forgiven. There can be no doubt that it would all have been forgiven with the greatest ease had Paul told the story before it had reached her ears from any other source. Had he said to her — when her heart was softest towards him — I once loved another woman, and that woman is here now in London, a trouble to me, persecuting⁴ me, and her history is so and so, and the history of my love for her was after this fashion, and the history of my declining love is after that fashion, and of this at any rate you may be sure, that this woman has never been near my heart from the first moment in which I saw you; — had he told it to her thus, there would not have been an opening for anger. And he doubtless would have so told it, had not Hetta’s brother interfered⁵ too quickly. He was then forced to exculpate⁶ himself, to confess rather than to tell his own story — and to admit facts which wore the air of having been concealed⁷, and which had already been conceived to be altogether damning if true. It was that journey to Lowestoft, not yet a month old, which did the mischief⁸ — a journey as to which Hetta was not slow in understanding all that Roger Carbury had thought about it, though Roger would say nothing of it to herself. Paul had been staying at the seaside with this woman in amicable⁹

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