And Caterina?  How did she pass these sunny autumn days, in which the skies seemed to be smiling on the family gladness?  To her the change in Miss Assher’s manner was unaccountable.  Those compassionate attentions, those smiling condescensions, were torture to Caterina, who was constantly tempted to repulse them with anger.  She thought, ’Perhaps Anthony has told her to be kind to poor Tina.’  This was an insult.  He ought to have known that the mere presence of Miss Assher was painful to her, that Miss Assher’s smiles scorched her, that Miss Assher’s kind words were like poison stings inflaming her to madness.  And he—­Anthony —­he was evidently repenting of the tenderness he had been betrayed into that morning in the drawing-room.  He was cold and distant and civil to her, to ward off Beatrice’s suspicions, and Beatrice could be so gracious now, because she was sure of Anthony’s entire devotion.  Well! and so it ought to be—­and she ought not to wish it otherwise.  And yet—­oh, he was cruel to her.  She could never have behaved so to him.  To make her love him so—­to speak such tender words—­to give her such caresses, and then to behave as if such things had never been.  He had given her the poison that seemed so sweet while she was drinking it, and now it was in her blood, and she was helpless.’

With this tempest pent up in her bosom, the poor child went up to her room every night, and there it all burst forth.  There, with loud whispers and sobs, restlessly pacing up and down, lying on the hard floor, courting cold and weariness, she told to the pitiful listening night the anguish which she could pour into no mortal ear.  But always sleep came at last, and always in the morning the reactive calm that enabled her to live through the day.

It is amazing how long a young frame will go on battling with this sort of secret wretchedness, and yet show no traces of the conflict for any but sympathetic eyes.  The very delicacy of Caterina’s usual appearance, her natural paleness and habitually quiet mouse-like ways, made any symptoms of fatigue and suffering less noticeable.  And her singing—­the one thing in which she ceased to be passive, and became prominent—­lost none of its energy.  She herself sometimes wondered how it was that, whether she felt sad or angry, crushed with the sense of Anthony’s indifference, or burning with impatience under Miss Assher’s attentions, it was always a relief to her to sing.  Those full deep notes she sent forth seemed to be lifting the pain from her heart—­seemed to be carrying away the madness from her brain.

Thus Lady Cheverel noticed no change in Caterina, and it was only Mr. Gilfil who discerned with anxiety the feverish spot that sometimes rose on her cheek, the deepening violet tint under her eyes, and the strange absent glance, the unhealthy glitter of the beautiful eyes themselves.  But those agitated nights were producing a more fatal effect than was represented by these slight outward changes.