All the while that the story had been welling forth from her lips, that inner instinct which so seldom deceives, told her that she was doing wrong; and when she had ended, she would have given worlds not to have spoken. But the words were beyond recall, and she could only gaze stealthily at the listener, and, with a dull feeling of apprehension nestling at the bottom of her heart, endeavor to mark their effect, and to imagine the possible consequences of her indiscretion. But Leta sat bending over her embroidery, and apparently still thinking, with tearful eye, upon her own exile from home. Perhaps she had not even heard all that had been said to her; though, if the words had really caught her ear, where, after all, could be the harm? It was no secret in Rome that Sergius Vanno had brought his spouse from a lowly home; and it was surely no crime, that, during those years of poverty which Ænone had passed through before being called to fill her present station, she had once suffered her girlish fancy to rest for a little while upon one of her own class. And fortunately she had not gone further in her story, but at that point had left it to rest; making no mention of how that long-forgotten lover had so lately reappeared and confronted her.
Still there remained in her heart the irrepressible instinct that it would have been better if she had not spoken. And now, as she silently pondered upon her imprudence, it seemed as though her anxiety had suddenly endowed her brain with new and keener faculties of perception, so many startling ideas began to crowd in upon her. More particularly, full shape and tone seemed for the first time given to one terrible suspicion, which she had hitherto known only in a misty, intangible, and seldom recurring form--the suspicion that, if the passive girl before her were really an enemy, it was not owing to any mere ordinary impulse of fear, or envy, or inexplicable womanish dislike, but rather to secret rivalry.
That, within the past few days, Sergius had more and more exhibited toward her an indifference, which even his studied attempts to conduct himself with an appearance of his former interest and affection did not fully hide, Ænone could not but feel. That within her breast lurked the terrible thought that perhaps the time had forever passed for her to come to him as to a loving friend, and there fearlessly pour out her tribulations, her secret tears confessed. But throughout all this change, though it became each day more strongly marked, she had tried to cheat herself into the belief that the romantic warmth of a first attachment could not in any case be expected to last for many years--that in meeting indifference she was merely experiencing a common lot--that beneath his coolness there still lurked the old affection, as the lava will flow beneath the hardened crust--and that, if she were indeed losing the appearance of his love, it was merely because the claims of the court, the exigencies of the social world, or the demands of ambition had too much usurped his attention.