She was conscious, even
before it was carried out, even on that Sunday night when it began, of
an invasion of her rights; and a voice told her the invader's name.
Since then, by arts, by accident, by small things observed, and by the
general drift of Archie's humour, she had passed beyond all possibility
of doubt. With a sense of justice that Lord Hermiston might have
envied, she had that day in church considered and admitted the
attractions of the younger Kirstie; and with the profound humanity and
sentimentality of her nature, she had recognised the coming of fate.
Not thus would she have chosen. She had seen, in imagination, Archie
wedded to some tall, powerful, and rosy heroine of the golden locks,
made in her own image, for whom she would have strewed the bride-bed
with delight; and now she could have wept to see the ambition falsified.
But the gods had pronounced, and her doom was otherwise.
She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged with feverish thoughts.
There were dangerous matters pending, a battle was toward, over the fate
of which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and
disloyalty to either side.
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