"Oh, my dear friend, I am grateful for all you tell me of the changed situation at Markborough. But after all the thing is done--there can be no undoing it. The lies mingled with the truth have been put down. Perhaps people are ready now to let the truth itself slip back with the lies into the darkness. But how can we--Edith and I--and Hester--ever live the old life again? The old shelter, the old peace, are gone. We are wanderers and pilgrims henceforward! "As far as I know, Hester is still in complete ignorance of all that has happened. I have told her that Edith finds Tours so economical that she prefers to stay abroad for a couple of years, and to let the Upcote house. And I have said also that when she herself is tired of Paris, I am ready to take her to Germany, and then to Italy. She laughed, as though I had said something ridiculous! One never knows her real mind. But at least I see no sign of any suspicion in her; and I am sure that she has seen no English newspaper that could have given her a clue. As to Philip Meryon, as I have told you before, I often feel a vague uneasiness; but watch as I will, I can find nothing to justify it. Oh! Richard, my heart is broken for her. A little love from her, and the whole world would change for me. But even what I once possessed these last few months seem to have taken from me!" "The thing is done!--there can be no undoing it." That was the sore burden of all Meynell's thoughts, awakening in him, at times, the "bitter craving to strike heavy blows" at he knew not what. What, indeed, could ever undo the indecency, the cruelty, the ugly revelations of these three months? The grossness of the common public, the weakness of friends, the solemn follies to which men are driven by hate or bigotry: these things might well have roused the angry laughter that lives in all quick and honest souls. But the satiric mood, when it appeared, soon vanished. He remembered the saying of Meredith concerning the spectacle of Bossuet over the dead body of Moliere--"at which the dark angels may, but men do not, laugh."