How great might have been his success, and
how terrible was his failure! Had he taken the woman's hand and her
money, had he clenched his grasp on the great prize offered to him,
his misery would have been ten times worse the first moment that he
would have been away from her. Then, indeed,--it being so that he
was a man with a heart within his breast,--there would have been no
comfort for him, in his outlooks on any side. But even now, when he
had done right,--knowing well that he had done right,--he found that
comfort did not come readily within his reach.
CHAPTER LXXIII
Amantium Irae
Miss Effingham's life at this time was not the happiest in the world.
Her lines, as she once said to her friend Lady Laura, were not
laid for her in pleasant places. Her residence was still with her
aunt, and she had come to find that it was almost impossible any
longer to endure Lady Baldock, and quite impossible to escape from
Lady Baldock. In former days she had had a dream that she might
escape, and live alone if she chose to be alone; that she might be
independent in her life, as a man is independent, if she chose to
live after that fashion; that she might take her own fortune in her
own hand, as the law certainly allowed her to do, and act with it as
she might please.
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