She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time and chance, except perhaps fair play - Thomas Hardy

She had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly.

After wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illumined her. She felt that she would do well to be useful again — to taste anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them;

So passed away Sorrow the Undesired — that intrusive creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature who respects not the social law; a waif to whom eternal Time had been a matter of days merely, who knew not that such things as years and centuries ever were; to whom the cottage interior was the universe, the week's weather climate, new-born babyhood human existence, and the instinct to suck human knowledge.