And
she remembered her conversation with Ruffo.
Actualities rushed back upon her memory. She felt as if she heard them
coming like an army to the assault. Her brain was crowded with
jostling thoughts, her heart with jostling feelings and fears. She was
like one trying to find a safe path through a black troop of
threatening secrets. What had happened that night between Vere and
Emile? Why had Vere fled? Why had she wept? And the previous night
with the Marchesino--Vere had not spoken of it to her mother. Hermione
had found it impossible to ask her child for any details. There was a
secret too. And there were the two secrets, which now she knew, but
which Vere and Artois thought were unknown to her still. And then--
that mystery of which Ruffo had innocently spoken that night.
As Hermione, moving in imagination through the black and threatening
troop, came to that last secret, she was again assailed by a curious,
and horrible, sensation of apprehension. She again felt very little
and very helpless, like a child.
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