She regretted it bitterly.  Why?

Comparing Mrs. Linley’s prospects with hers, was there anything to justify regret for the divorced wife?  She had her sweet little child to make her happy; she had a fortune of her own to lift her above sordid cares; she was still handsome, still a woman to be admired.  While she held her place in the world as high as ever, what was the prospect before Sydney Westerfield?  The miserable sinner would end as she had deserved to end.  Absolutely dependent on a man who was at that moment perhaps lamenting the wife whom he had deserted and lost, how long would it be before she found herself an outcast, without a friend to help her—­with a reputation hopelessly lost—­face to face with the temptation to drown herself or poison herself, as other women had drowned themselves or poisoned themselves, when the brightest future before them was rest in death?

If she had been a few years older, Herbert Linley might never again have seen her a living creature.  But she was too young to follow any train of repellent thought persistently to its end.  The man she had guiltily (and yet how naturally) loved was lord and master in her heart, doubt him as she might.  Even in his absence he pleaded with her to have some faith in him still.

She reviewed his language and his conduct toward her, when she had returned that morning from her walk.  He had been kind and considerate; he had listened to her little story of the relics of her father, found in the garret, as if her interests were his interests.  There had been nothing to disappoint her, nothing to complain of, until she had rashly attempted to discover whether he was free to make her his wife.  She had only herself to blame if he was cold and distant when she had alluded to that delicate subject, on the day when he first knew that the Divorce had been granted and his child had been taken from him.  And yet, he might have found a kinder way of reproving a sensitive woman than looking into the street—­as if he had forgotten her in the interest of watching the strangers passing by!  Perhaps he was not thinking of the strangers; perhaps his mind was dwelling fondly and regretfully on his wife?

Instinctively, she felt that her thoughts were leading her back again to a state of doubt from which her youthful hopefulness recoiled.  Was there nothing she could find to do which would offer some other subject to occupy her mind than herself and her future?

Looking absently round the room, she noticed the packet of her father’s letters placed on the table by her bedside.

The first three letters that she examined, after untying the packet, were briefly written, and were signed by names unknown to her.  They all related to race-horses, and to cunningly devised bets which were certain to make the fortunes of the clever gamblers on the turf who laid them.  Absolute indifference on the part of the winners to the ruin of the losers, who were not in the secret, was the one feeling in common, which her father’s correspondents presented.  In mercy to his memory she threw the letters into the empty fireplace, and destroyed them by burning.