Lucy went back to her own room and locked herself in, and with trembling hands began to pack up her jewels and some of her clothes.  But when it came to this, wounded pride was sorely taxed by a host of reminiscences and tender regrets, and every now and then the tears suddenly gushed and fell upon her poor hands as she put things out, or patted them flat, to wander on the world.

While she is thus sorrowfully employed, let me try and give an outline of the feelings that had now for some time been secretly growing in her, since without their co-operation she would never have been driven to the strange step she now meditated.

Lucy was a very unselfish and very intelligent girl.  The first trait had long blinded her to something; the second had lately helped to open her eyes.

If ever you find a person quick to discover selfishness in others, be sure that person is selfish; for it is only the selfish who come into habitual collision with selfishness, and feel how sharp-pointed a thing it is.  When Unselfish meets Selfish, each acts after his kind; Unselfish gives way, Selfish holds his course, and so neither is thwarted, and neither finds out the other’s character.

Lucy, then, of herself, would never have discovered her relatives’ egotism.  But they helped her, and she was too bright not to see anything that was properly pointed out to her.

When Fountain kept showing and proving Mrs. Bazalgette’s egotism, and Mrs. Bazalgette kept showing and proving Mr. Fountain’s egotism, Lucy ended by seeing both their egotisms, as clearly as either could desire; and, as she despised egotism, she lost her respect for both these people, and let them convince her they were both persons against whom she must be on her guard.

This was the direct result of their mines and countermines heretofore narrated, but not the only result.  It followed indirectly, but inevitably, that the present holy alliance failed.  Lucy had not forgotten the past; and to her this seemed not a holy, but an unholy, hollow, and empty alliance.

“They hate one another,” said she, “but it seems they hate me worse, since they can hide their mutual dislike to combine against poor me.”

Another thing:  Lucy was one of those women who thirst for love, and, though not vain enough to be always showing they think they ought to be beloved, have quite secret amour propre enough to feel at the bottom of their hearts that they were sent here to that end, and that it is a folly and a shame not to love them more or less.

If ever Madame Ristori plays “Maria Stuarda” within a mile of you, go and see her.  Don’t chatter:  you can do that at home; attend to the scene; the worst play ever played is not so unimproving as chit-chat.  Then, when the scaffold is even now erected, and the poor queen, pale and tearful, palpitates in death’s grasp, you shall see her suddenly illumined with a strange joy, and hear her say, with a marvelous burst of feminine triumph,