Wearily, drearily, she dragged herself
home. It was nearly sunset when she arrived, and she told her mother
she was tired and had the headache, which was true,--though, if she had
said heartache, it would have been truer. Her mother immediately did
what ninety-nine mothers out of a hundred would do in similar
circumstances,--made her swallow a cup of strong tea, and sent her to
bed. Alas, alas, that there are sorrows which the strongest tea cannot
assuage!
When the last echo of her mother's footstep died on the stairs, and Ivy
was alone in the darkness, the tide of bitterness and desolation swept
unchecked over her soul, and she wept tears more passionate and
desponding than her life had ever before known,--tears of shame and
indignation and grief. It was true that the thought which Mrs. Simm had
suggested had never crossed her mind before; yet it is no less true,
that, all-unconsciously, she had been weaving a golden web, whose
threads, though too fine and delicate even for herself to perceive,
were yet strong enough to entangle her life in their meshes. A secret
chamber, far removed from the noise and din of the world,--a chamber
whose soft and rose-tinted light threw its radiance over her whole
future, and within whose quiet recesses she loved to sit alone and
dream away the hours,--had been rudely entered, and thrown violently
open to the light of day, and Ivy saw with dismay how its pictures had
become ghastly and its sacredness was defiled.
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