Bowyer supposed some one had called. She wandered about to a great many
places in these days, but always returned to the scenes in which her life
had been passed, and where alone her work could be done, if it could be
done at all. She came in and listened while the tale of her own
carelessness and heedlessness was told, and stood by while her favorite
was taken to another woman's bosom for comfort, and heard everything and
saw everything. She was used to it by this time; but to be nothing is
hard, even when you are accustomed to it; and though she knew that they
would not hear her, what could she do but cry out to them as she stood
there unregarded? "Oh, have pity upon me!" Lady Mary said; and the pang
in her heart was so great that the very atmosphere was stirred, and the
air could scarcely contain her and the passion of her endeavor to make
herself known, but thrilled like a harp-string to her cry. Mrs. Bowyer
heard the jar and tingle in the inanimate world, but she thought only
that it was some charitable visitor who had come in, and gone softly away
again at the sound of tears.
And if Lady Mary could not make herself known to the poor cottagers who
had loved her, or to the women who wept for her loss while they blamed
her, how was she to reveal herself and her secret to the men who, if they
had seen her, would have thought her an hallucination? Yes, she tried
all, and even went a long journey over land and sea to visit the earl,
who was her heir, and awake in him an interest in her child.
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