I was delighted to see old 'Giblets' quietly strapping his luggage in the
hall, and heard from him in a whisper that he was to leave that evening by
rail--he did not know whither.
About half an hour afterwards, Mary Quince, going out to reconnoitre, heard
from old Wyat in the lobby that he had just started to meet the train.
Blessed be heaven for that deliverance! An evil spirit had been cast out,
and the house looked lighter and happier. It was not until I sat down in
the quiet of my room that the scenes and images of that agitating day began
to move before my memory in orderly procession, and for the first time
I appreciated, with a stunning sense of horror and a perfect rapture of
thanksgiving, the value of my escape and the immensity of the danger which
had threatened me. It may have been miserable weakness--I think it was. But
I was young, nervous, and afflicted with a troublesome sort of conscience,
which occasionally went mad, and insisted, in small things as well as
great, upon sacrifices which my reason now assures me were absurd. Of
Dudley I had a perfect horror; and yet had that system of solicitation,
that dreadful and direct appeal to my compassion, that placing of my feeble
girlhood in the seat of the arbiter of my aged uncle's hope or despair,
been long persisted in, my resistance might have been worn out--who can
tell?--and I self-sacrificed! Just as criminals in Germany are teased, and
watched, and cross-examined, year after year, incessantly, into a sort of
madness; and worn out with the suspense, the iteration, the self-restraint,
and insupportable fatigue, they at last cut all short, accuse themselves,
and go infinitely relieved to the scaffold--you may guess, then, for me,
nervous, self-diffident, and alone, how intense was the comfort of knowing
that Dudley was actually married, and the harrowing importunity which had
just commenced for ever silenced.
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