!

But it can be resolutely disbelieved.

We can put it before Providence to cleanse itself of this thing, or
suffer the consequence that we now and for ever quit our worship, lose
our faith in it and our secret respect. She heard Marko's tale confirmed,
whispers of leaden import, physicians' rumours, and she doubted. She
clung insanely to her incredulity. Laughter had been slain, but not her
belief in the invincibility of Alvan; she could not imagine him
overthrown in a conflict--and by a hand that she had taken and twisted in
her woman's hand subduingly! He, the unerring shot, laid low by one who
had never burnt powder till the day before the duel! It was easier to
remain incredulous notwithstanding the gradational distinctness of the
whispers. She dashed her 'Impossible!' at Providence, conceived the tale
in wilful and almost buoyant self-deception to be a conspiracy in the
family to hide from her Alvan's magnanimous dismissal of poor Marko from
the field of strife. That was the most evident fact. She ran through
delusion and delusion, exhausting each and hugging it after the false
life was out.

So violent was the opposition to reason in the idea of Alvans descending
to the duel and falling by the hand of Marko, that it cried to be
rebutted by laughter: and she could not, she could laugh no more, nor
imagine laughing, though she could say of the people of the house, 'They
act it well!' and hate them for the serious whispering air, and the
dropping of medical terms and weights of drugs, which robbed her of what
her instinct told her was the surest weapon for combating deception.
Them, however, and their acting she could have with stood enough to
silently discredit them through sheer virulence of a hatred that proved
them to be duly credited. But her savage wilfulness could not resist the
look of Marko. She had to yield up her breast to the truth, and stimulate
further unbelief lest her loaded heart should force her to run to the
wounded lion's bedside, and hear his reproaches. She had to cheat her
heart, and the weak thing consented to it, loathing her for the
imposture. Seeing Marko too, assured of it by his broken look, the
terrible mournfulness less than the horrible irony of the truth gnawed
within her. It spoke to her in metal, not in flesh. It haunted her
feelings and her faint imaginations alienly. It discoloured, it scorned
the earth, and earth's teachings, and the understanding of life. Rational
clearness