’But, my dear, if all that I hear is true, there is a most estimable young man whom everybody likes, and particularly all your own family, and whom you like very much yourself; and you will have nothing to say to him, though his constancy is like the constancy of an old Paladin—­and all because of this wretch who just now came in your way.’

‘Mrs Thorne, it is impossible to explain it all.’

’I do not want you to explain it all.  Of course I would not ask any young woman to marry any man whom she did not love.  Such marriages are abominable to me.  But I think that a young woman ought to get married if the thing fairly comes in her way, and if her friends approve, and if she is fond of the man who is fond of her.  It may be that some memory of what has gone before is allowed to stand in your way, and that it should not be so allowed.  It sometimes happens that a horrid morbid sentiment will destroy a life.  Excuse me, then, Lily, if I say too much to you in my hope that you may not suffer after this fashion.’

‘I know how kind you are, Mrs Thorne.’

’Here we are at home, and perhaps you would like to go in.  I have some calls which I must make.’  Then the conversation was ended, and Lily was alone.

As if she had not thought of it all before!  As if here was anything new in this counsel which Mrs Thorne had given her!  She had received the same advice from her mother, from her sister, from her uncle, and from Lady Julia, till she was sick of it.  How had it come to pass that matters which with others are so private, should with her have become the public property of so large a circle?  Any other girl would receive advice on such a subject from her mother alone, and there the secret would rest.  But her secret had been published, as it were, by the town-crier in the High Street!  Everybody knew that she had been jilted by Adolphus Crosbie, and that it was intended that she should be consoled by John Eames.  And people seemed to think that they had a right to rebuke her if she expressed an unwillingness to carry out this intention which the public had so kindly arranged for her.

Morbid sentiment!  Why should she be accused of morbid sentiment because she was unable to transfer her affections to a man who had been fixed on as her future husband by the large circle of acquaintances who had interested themselves in her affairs?  There was nothing morbid in either her desires or her regrets.  So she assured herself, with something very like anger at the accusation made against her.  She had been contented, and was contented, to live at home as her mother had lived, asking for no excitement beyond that given by the daily routine of her duties.  There could be nothing morbid in that.  She would go back to Allington as soon as might be, and have done with this London life, which only made her wretched.  This seeing of Crosbie had been terrible to her.  She did not tell herself that his image had been shattered.  Her idea was that all her misery had come from the untowardness of the meeting.  But there was the fact that she had seen the man and heard his voice, and that the seeing him and hearing him had made her miserable.  She certainly desired that it might never be her lot either to see him or to hear him again.