Once the station reached, she cared little either for notice or discovery. The desperate step she had taken could not long remain a secret from the neighbourhood at large; but by the time that John received her letter, she would--according to her present expectations--be already lost to him, and far beyond reach of discovery, in some well-chosen but, of course, very humble retreat, which Arthur Vavasour’s thoughtful kindness would, she doubted not, speedily provide for her. With her mind full of these projects, but with a heart only half rejoicing over her newly-found freedom, Honor went on her way. Her head ached, and a strange sense of weariness rendered her steps slow and lagging; but, for all that she both felt and looked ill, there was about her air and walk (her face was too hidden by a thick veil for strangers’ eyes to gaze upon it) that nameless charm which commands attention, and excites the notice of the curious. Unconscious of, and at the moment utterly indifferent to, admiration, Honor turned her eyes neither to the right hand nor to the left as she passed slowly along the village-street. On her arrival at the post-office, she dropped--without allowing herself a moment’s reflection--the two letters she had written into the box; and then feeling a little more frightened and bewildered than she had done before--for there was a sense of the inexorable in this apparently unimportant act--she walked forward, erect, and outwardly with something of defiance in her mien, towards the station.