The winter had been a hard one for Pocahontas, harder, perhaps, for the gallant nature which forbade her to bewail herself.  She suffered deeply and dumbly through all the weary nights and days.  Pride and womanly reserve precluded all beating of the breast, and forced principle and nature to the ceaseless fight.  Right gallantly she bore herself.  The mortification, the anguish, the love, must be met, hand to hand, eye to eye, foot to foot.  She endeavored to keep cheerful—­to take the same interest in life as formerly, and in the main she succeeded; but there would come times when the struggle would seem greater than she could bear, and being a woman, with a woman’s heart, and a woman’s nerves, she would be irritable and difficult.  But these moods were never of long duration, any more than the more desperate ones, when she would lock herself in her chamber and cast herself on the floor and lie there prone and quivering—­heart and conscience utterly at variance—­heart crying out with mad insistence that the struggle was in vain; for love was strengthened by repression; and conscience sternly replying that it should not be; the struggle should continue until the last vestige of love should be expunged from heart and life.  It was no wonder, as time went on, that the girl’s cheek paled and that a dumb pleading came into the pure gray eyes.

Sometimes the thought of Jim would come and place itself in contrast to the thought of the other man, for, unconsciously to her, her old friend was her standard in many things.  Her recognition of the nobility of Jim’s love would force, in some sort, recognition of the selfishness of Thorne’s love.  She put such thoughts from her fiercely, and girded at Jim in her aching, unreasonable heart, because his love was grander and truer than the love she craved.  Once, when old Sholto—­the great red setter—­came and laid his head lovingly upon her lap, she frowned and pushed him roughly away, because he looked up at her with eyes whose honest faithfulness reminded her of Jim.

And the mother watched her child silently; conscious, through the divination of unselfish mother-love, that her daughter suffered, yet powerless to help her, save by increased affection and the intangible yet perceptible comfort of a delicate respect.  She could trust her child and would not force her confidence; if spoken sympathy were needed, Pocahontas knew that her mother’s heart was open to her, and if to her silence should seem best, she should have her will.  From long experience Mrs. Mason knew that some sorrows must be left quietly to time.

When at length the news of Thorne’s divorce reached them, she warded off with tender consideration all remark or comment likely to hurt the girl, and gave straight-forward, hot-tempered Berkeley a hint which effectually silenced him.  In sooth, the honest fellow had small liking for the subject.  He bitterly resented what he considered Thorne’s culpable concealment of the fact of his marriage.