h, I'm so glad."

The Governor hurried out again, and Alicia returned to the sofa. The
knot of her troubles had been rudely cut. Perhaps this summary ending
was best. She herself would not, she knew, have had the strength to tear
herself away from that place, but if fate tore her--perhaps well and
good. Nothing but unhappiness waited there for her; it seemed to her
that nothing but unhappiness waited anywhere now; but at least, over at
home, she would not have to fear the discovery of her secret, the secret
she herself kept so badly, nor to endure the torture of gossip, hints,
and clumsy pity. No one, over at home, would think of Medland; they
might just know his name, might perhaps have heard him rumoured for a
dangerous man and a vexatious opponent of good Sir Robert. Certainly
they would never think of him as the cause of bruising of heart to a
young lady in fashionable society. So he would pass out of her life; she
would leave him to his busy, strenuous, happy-unhappy life, so full of
triumphs and defeats, of ups and downs, of the love of many and the hate
of many. Perhaps she, like the rest, would read his name in the _Times_
now and then, unless indeed he were utterly vanquished. No, he was not
finally beaten. Of that she was sure. His name would be read often in
cold print, but the glow of the life he lived would be henceforth
unknown to her. She would go back to the old world and the old circle of
it. What would happen after that she was too listless to think. It was
summed up in negations; and these again melted into one great want, the
absence of the man to whom her imagination and her heart blindly and
obstinately clung.

Lady Eynesford had left her newspaper, and Alicia found her hand upon
it. Taking it up, she read Medland's evidence at the inquest. A sudden
revulsion of feeling seized her. Was this the man she was dreaming
about, a man who calmly, coolly, as though caring nothing, told that
story in the face of all the world? Was she never to get rid of the
spell he had cast on her before she knew what he really was? For a man
like this she had sacrificed her self-respect, bandied insults with a
vulgar upstart, and brought on her head a reproach more fitting for an
ill-mannered child. She threw the paper from her and rose to her feet.
She would think no more of him; he might be what he would; he was no fit
subject for her thoughts, and he and the place where he lived and all
this wretched country deserved