This was exactly the kind of thing he
liked, and the kind of thing that suited him, human mole, born detective
and conspirator as he was.
When Leam met him in the wood on the evening of her confession to Edgar,
she met him with the deliberate intention of confessing her fearful
secret to him too, and of asking him to help her to escape, like the
friend which he had promised he would be. She knew that it was
impossible for her now to live at North Aston, and the sole desire she
had was to be blotted out, as she had been.
There was no excitement about her, no feverish exaltation that would
burn itself cold before twenty-four hours were over--only the dead
dreariness of heartbreak, the tenacious resolution of despair. She
neither wept nor wrung her hands, but quiet, pale, rigid, she told her
terrible story in the low and level tones in which a Greek Fate might
have spoken, as sad and as immutable. She had sinned, and now had made
such atonement as she could by confession--to her lover to save him from
pollution, to her father to cancel his obligations to her, to her friend
to be helped in her lifelong penance. This done, she had strengthened
herself to bear all that might come to her with that resignation of
remorse which demands no rights and inherits no joys. She was not one of
those emotional half-hearted creatures who resolve one day, break down
the next, and drift always. For good and evil alike she had the power to
hold where she had gripped and to maintain what she had undertaken; and
even her life at Windy Brow did not shake her.
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