‘Can I have been guilty of leading him to think . . .?’ she said, in a tone that writhed, at a second discussion of this hapless affair.

‘They choose to think,’ mademoiselle replied.  ’It is he or another.  My dear and dearest, you have entered the field where shots fly thick, as they do to soldiers in battle; and it is neither your fault nor any one’s, if you are hit.’

Nesta gazed at her, with a shy supplicating cry of ‘Louise.’

Mademoiselle immediately answered the tone of entreaty.  ’Has it happened to me?  I am of the age of eight and twenty; passable, to look at:  yes, my dear, I have gone through it.  To spare you the questions tormenting you, I will tell you, that perhaps our experience of our feelings comes nigh on a kind of resemblance.  The first gentleman who did me the honour to inform me of his passion, was a hunchback.’

Nesta cried ‘Oh!’ in a veritable pang of sympathy, and clapped hands to her ears, to shut out Mr. Barmby’s boom of the terrific word attacking Louise from that deformed one.

Her disillusionment became of the sort which hears derision.  A girl of quick blood and active though unregulated intellect, she caught at the comic of young women’s hopes and experiences, in her fear of it.

’My own precious poor dear Louise! what injustice there is in the world for one like my Louise to have a hunchback to be the first . . . !’

‘But, my dear, it did me no harm.’

‘But if it had been known!’

‘But it was known!’

Nesta controlled a shuddering:  ’It is the knowledge of it in ourselves—­that it has ever happened;—­you dear Louise, who deserve so much better!  And one asks—­Oh, why are we not left in peace!  And do look at the objects it makes of us!’ Mademoiselle:  could see, that the girl’s desperation had got hold of her humour for a life-buoy.  ’It is really worse to have it unknown—­when you are compelled to be his partner in sharing the secret, and feel as if it were a dreadful doll you conceal for fear that everybody will laugh at its face.’

She resumed her seriousness:  ’I find it so hard to be vexed with him and really really like him.  For he is a good man; but he will not let one shake him off.  He distresses:  because we can’t quite meet as we did.  Last Wednesday Concert evening, he kept away; and I am annoyed that I was glad.’

’Moths have to pass through showers, and keep their pretty patterns from damage as best they can,’ said mademoiselle.

Nesta transformed herself into a disciple of Philosophy on the spot.  ’Yes, all these feelings of ours are moth-dust!  One feels them.  I suppose they pass.  They must.  But tell me, Louise, dear soul, was your poor dear good little afflicted suitor—­was he kindly pitied?’

’Conformably with the regulations prescribed to young damsels who are in request to surrender the custody of their hands.  It is easy to commit a dangerous excess in the dispensing of that article they call pity of them.’