If she could only have gone home, she thought to herself, what a refuge
the dull quiet of her lonely life would have been! She had not slept five
minutes since the festival of last night, but had lain tossing wearily from
side to side, thinking of what George Fairfax had said to her--thinking of
what might have been and could never be, and then praying that she might do
her duty; that she might have strength to keep firmly to the right, if he
should try to tempt her again.
He would scarcely do that, she thought. That wild desperate talk of last
night was perhaps the merest folly--a caprice of the moment, the shallowest
rodomontade, which he would be angry with himself for having spoken. She
told herself that this was so; but she knew now, as she had not known
before last night, that she had given this man her heart.
It would be a hard thing to remain at Hale to perform her part in the grand
ceremonial of the marriage, and yet keep her guilty secret hidden from
every eye; above all, from his whom it most concerned. But there seemed no
possibility of escape from this ordeal, unless she were to be really ill,
and excused on that ground. She sat in the oriel that afternoon, wondering
whether a painful headache, the natural result of her sleeplessness and
hyper-activity of brain, might not be the beginning of some serious
illness--a fever perhaps, which would strike her down for a time and make
an end to all her difficulties.
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