It is a curious thing to be an invalid. It has never suited me to be indisposed for great lengths of time. I have always despised a complete dependency upon the kindness of servants or the condescension of friends. During the time of my convalescence, I could scarcely hold a pen or sit upright in a chair. It was some many weeks before I could walk of my own accord. I lay abed every day, apart from those times when I was carried to a sofa, or a bath, and then returned again. As you might imagine, I passed many hours of solitude with nothing for company but the sounds within my head and, to be sure, the noise there grew more irksome by the day. There was one matter which vexed me more than anything else and it blared like a trumpet between my ears: the memory of my encounter with Lord Allenham.

I ruminated over every moment of that incident. I studied each of his movements. I examined the vacant expression upon his face when he caught sight of me and I shuddered again and again to watch him turn his back. The misery these remembrances precipitated is almost inexpressible here. I shed a good many tears in contemplating them, but once my sorrow was spent, it gave way to something else entirely.

At first it was a sense of confusion. No matter how I studied these events, they failed to join together into anything rational. I meditated upon the circumstances of our parting and I recounted each of his pledges of love. In the light of his actions these now appeared remarkably flimsy. I wondered if he had witnessed my injury or knew of my suffering. Why, when he heard the cries and shouts of the riot, did love not compel him back to the spot where he had last seen me so as to ensure my safety? Indeed, had he spied me lying prone upon the street would he not have rushed to my aid? Yet, if he had assisted me, surely I would have awoken in his arms rather than in the Petits Appartements? The more I permitted my mind to stray along this path, the more crooked and bleak it became.

It required but a few days of reflection for confusion to ripen into anger and anger to darken into remorse. Was it this that Mrs Elliott had wished me to see? She had been too kind, too gentle to assail me with the truth. She understood that my weak and foolish heart had not yet acquired the ability to apprehend it, and yet there, in my invalid’s bed, I embraced it entirely: Allenham had abandoned me. I had been ruthlessly deceived by a man who cared no more for me than a pair of worn-through shoes. Was this not the very fact of the matter?