the corpse. 'Why not
have died in your own cottage if you would die! Then nobody would ever
have known of our imprudent union, and no syllable would have been
breathed of how I mismated myself for love of you!'

The clock in the courtyard striking the hour of one aroused Lady Caroline
from the stupor into which she had fallen, and she stood up, and went
towards the door. To awaken and tell her mother seemed her only way out
of this terrible situation; yet when she put her hand on the key to
unlock it she withdrew herself again. It would be impossible to call
even her mother's assistance without risking a revelation to all the
world through the servants; while if she could remove the body unassisted
to a distance she might avert suspicion of their union even now. This
thought of immunity from the social consequences of her rash act, of
renewed freedom, was indubitably a relief to her, for, as has been said,
the constraint and riskiness of her position had begun to tell upon the
Lady Caroline's nerves.

She braced herself for the effort, and hastily dressed herself; and then
dressed him. Tying his dead hands together with a handkerchief; she laid
his arms round her shoulders, and bore him to the landing and down the
narrow stairs. Reaching the bottom by the window, she let his body slide
slowly over the sill till it lay on the ground without. She then climbed
over the window-sill herself, and, leaving the sash open, dragged him on
to the lawn with a rustle not louder than the rustle of a broom. There
she took a securer hold, and plunged with him under the trees.

Away from the precincts of the house she could apply herself more
vigorously to her task, which was a heavy one enough for her, robust as
she was; and the exertion and fright she had already undergone began to
tell upon her by the time she reached the corner of a beech-plantation
which intervened between the manor-house and the village. Here she was
so nearly exhausted that she feared she might have to leave him on the
spot. But she plodded on after a while, and keeping upon the grass at
every opportunity she stood at last opposite the poor young man's garden-
gate, where he lived with his father, the parish-clerk. How she
accomplished the end of her task Lady Caroline never quite knew; but, to
avoid leaving traces in the road, she carried him bodily across the
gravel, and laid him down at the door. Perfectly aware of his ways of
coming and going,