This time Sophronia was so much in earnest that she found it necessary to bend forward in the carriage and give Bella a kiss. A Judas order of kiss; for she thought, while she yet pressed Bella’s hand after giving it, “Upon your own showing, you vain heartless girl, puffed up by the doting folly of a dustman, I need have no relenting towards you . If my husband, who sends me here, should form any schemes for making you a victim, I should certainly not cross him again.” In those very same moments, Bella was thinking, “Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?”

As usual, there was no answer in the looking-glass when she got home and referred these questions to it. Perhaps if she had consulted some better oracle, the result might have been more satisfactory; but she did not, and all things consequent marched the march before them.