The Interloper by Violet Jacob

LADY ELIZA LAMONT was like a person who has walked in the dark and been / struck to the ground by some familiar object, the existence and / position of which he has been foolish enough to forget. Straight from / her lover, Cecilia had sought her, and put what had happened plainly / before her; she did not know what view her aunt might take, but she was / not prepared for the effect of her news. She sat calm under the torrent / of excited words, her happiness dying within her, watching with / miserable eyes the changes of her companion's face. Lady Eliza was / shaken to the depths; she had not foreseen the contingency which might / take her nearest and dearest, and set her in the very midst of the / enemy's camp.

Though she forced herself to be civil to Gilbert Speid, and felt no / actual enmity towards him, everything to do with him was hateful to / her. Cecilia, whom she loved as a daughter, and to whom she clung more / closely with each passing year, would be cut off from her, not in love / nor in gratitude, as she knew well enough, but by the barrier of such / surroundings as she, Lady Eliza, could never induce herself to / penetrate. That house from which, as she passed its gates, she was wont / to avert her face, would be Cecilia's home. For some time she had been / schooling herself to the idea of their parting. When Crauford's / laborious courtship had ended in failure, she had been glad; but, in / comparison to this new suitor, she would have welcomed him with open / arms. He had a blameless character, an even temper, excellent / prospects, and no distance to which he could have transported Cecilia / would divide them so surely as the few miles which separated Morphie / from Whanland. She would hear her called ‘Mrs. Speid'; she would / probably see her the mother of children in whose veins ran the blood of / the woman she abhorred. The tempest of her feelings stifled all justice / and all reason.