Adela implored to be allowed to remain at home instead of attending
the lecture, but on this point Mrs. Waltham was inflexible. The girl
could not offer resolute opposition in a matter which only involved
an hour or two's endurance. She sat in pale silence. Then her mother
broke into tears, bewailed herself as a luckless being, entreated
her daughter's pardon, but in the end was perfectly ready to accept
Adela's self-sacrifice.

On her return from New Wanley, Adela sat alone till tea-time, and
after that meal again went to her room. She was not one of those
girls to whom tears come as a matter of course on any occasion of
annoyance or of grief; her bright eyes had seldom been dimmed since
childhood, for the lightsomeness of her character threw off trifling
troubles almost as soon as they were felt, and of graver afflictions
she had hitherto known none since her father's death. But since the
shock she received on that day when her mother revealed Hubert
Eldon's unworthiness, her emotional life had suffered a slow change.
Evil, previously known but as a dark mystery shadowing far-off
regions, had become the constant preoccupation of her thoughts.
Drawing analogies from the story of her faith, she imaged Hubert as
the angel who fell from supreme purity to a terrible lordship of
perdition. Of his sins she had the dimmest conception; she was told
that they were sins of impurity, and her understanding of such could
scarcely have been expressed save in the general language of her
prayers. Guarded jealously at every moment of her life, the world
had made no blur on the fair tablet of her mind; her Eden had
suffered no invasion. She could only repeat to herself that her
heart had gone dreadfully astray in its fondness, and that,
whatsoever it cost her, the old hopes, the strength of which was