There was little or nothing in the affair she could
have wished otherwise except its origin. She was mischievous enough
to enjoy even the thought of the consternation it would cause at
Portland Place. She did not realize all its awkwardness. A letter
to Lady Bellair when she reached home would, she said to herself,
set everything right; and if Malcolm had now repented and put about,
she would instantly have ordered him to hold on for Lossie. But it
was mortifying that she should have come at the will of Malcolm,
and not by her own--worse than mortifying that perhaps she would
have to say so. If she were going to say so, she must turn him away
as soon as she arrived. There was no help for it. She dared not
keep him after that in the face of society. But she might take the
bold, and perhaps a little dangerous measure of adopting the flight
as altogether her own madcap idea. Her thoughts went floundering
in the bog of expediency, until she was tired, and declined from
thought to reverie.
Then dawning out of the dreamland of her past, appeared the image
of Lenorme. Pure pleasure, glorious delight, such as she now felt,
could not long possess her mind, without raising in its charmed
circle the vision of the only man except her father whom she had
ever--something like loved. Her behaviour to him had not yet roused
in her shame or sorrow or sense of wrong.
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