Perhaps the original
sin that was in her had manifested itself again as when she was a little
girl! She thought over all her acts of pretended indifference: the
mocking air with which she had received Felicien, and the malicious
pleasure she took in giving him a false idea of herself. And the
astonishment at what she had done, added to a cutting remorse for her
cruelty, increased her distress. Now, her whole heart was filled with a
deep infinite pity for the suffering she had caused him without really
meaning to do so.
She saw him constantly before her, as he was when he left the house in
the morning: the despairing expression of his face, his troubled eyes,
his trembling lips; and in imagination she followed him through the
streets, as he went home, pale, utterly desolate, and wounded to the
heart's core by her. Where was he now? Perhaps at this hour he was
really ill!
She wrung her hands in agony, distressed that she could not at once
repair the evil she had done. Ah! how she revolted at the idea of having
made another suffer, for she had always wished to be good, and to render
those about her as happy as possible.
Twelve o'clock would ere long ring out from the old church-tower; the
great elms of the garden of the Bishop's palace hid the moon, which was
just appearing above the horizon, and the chamber was still dark.
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