Whether in this
she did well for the world, for the truth, or for her own soul, she never
wasted a thought. In vain did her aunt ply her with questions; she felt
that to answer one of them would be to wrong him, and lose her last
righteous hold upon the man who had at least once loved her a little.
Without a gleam, without even a shadow of hope for herself, she clung,
through shame and blame, to his scathlessness as the only joy left her. He
had most likely, she thought, all but forgotten her very existence, for he
had never written to her, or made any effort to discover what had become of
her. She clung to the conviction that he could never have heard of what
had befallen her.
By and by she grew able to reflect that to remain where she was would be
the ruin of her aunt; for who would lodge in the same house with _her_? She
must go at once! and her longing to go, with the impossibility of even
thinking where she could go, brought her to the very verge of despair, and
it was only the thought of her child that still gave her strength enough
to live on.
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