I am sure she was not, or he would have heard
of it in plain terms, have seen her eyes grow hard, and her mouth stretch
to bleakness. She was capable of royal, cold rage when she was offended.
But that he hated Ingram must have been plain to her.
And now, as she stood at gaze, lonely and pensive by the black pond, she
saw that it was over, her busy life. She was at the end of her tether,
must lose her power and the sense of it. She was to begin the world again,
starting with her fifty pounds, and without that which had made it a pride
before. With a little shiver of self-pity, a half-sigh and a tightening of
the lips, she accepted her fate. That was her way.
She regretted nothing, asked neither for mercy nor allowance. What she had
done, she had done; if it was to be done with, she could not help that;
she must go her way. Never for an instant did it enter her head that she
could marry Ingram. Nothing that he had urged, or Chevenix counselled,
made the smallest difference to her. She did not love Nevile any more; he
was horrible to her: enough of that. Whatever her fate was to be, she
would accept it: she chose it so. Without reasoning it out, that was final
for her.
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