"It's the excitement. I
shall be myself again after a night's rest."
"Aye, to be sure. Some supper, as is all ready, and then to bed," cried
Betty.
The prescription was good enough, but so far as the supper was concerned
Lavinia could not, to use Betty's words, "make much of a fist of it."
She was glad enough to escape the clack of tongues and the fire of
questions and crawl to her room.
Slowly the hours crept by, and when the early summer dawn broke Lavinia
was still awake watching the faint streaks of pale gold through the
little latticed window.
The rest in bed had not brought repose. Her mind was troubled. Lancelot
Vane's unexpected appearance and the story of his persecution strove for
mastery with the recollection of her triumph at the concert and had
overpowered it. All the old tenderness, the joy of being near him
revived. It was useless to ask why, useless to call herself weak and
silly to be drawn towards a man who had no force of character, whose
prospects were remote, whose health was undermined. The impression she
once had that he was faithless had not wholly disappeared, and she tried
to banish it. Her imagination found for him all manner of excuses. Yet
she could not decide that she wanted to see him again. One moment it
seemed as though the blank which had come into her life since their
rupture had been filled up now that he had come back, the next that it
would have been better if he had not.
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