This was not at all the kind of answer that Frank had looked for. Far from expressing the slightest regret, or indignation--he could have borne a little indignation with equanimity--Hermy seemed actually to welcome her release! But, of course, as he told himself, he knew better than to credit her assertions. Her pride would not allow her to let him see how deeply she was wounded; as was but natural, she tried to carry it off with a high hand; but he was not to be so easily hoodwinked. All the same, the tone of her reply did not fail to jar against the self-love which was one of his most pronounced characteristics; and not for a long time to come was he able to rid himself of an uneasy consciousness that his treatment of Hermia had been anything rather than that of a man of honor and a gentleman; and Frank had a great desire to pose as both--as though the two were not synonymous--not only before the world at large, but in the clearer eyes of his own conscience. CHAPTER XVII. THE PROGRESS OF EVENTS. In the press of other matters we have lost sight of Mrs. Hazeldine and Fanny for a time. The news of Mr. Hazeldine's tragical end came upon them with all the force and suddenness of an earthquake shock, shattering the little trivial round of their daily existence in a way which seemed to render it impossible that it should ever come together again. Not till the day of the funeral was Mrs. Hazeldine able to rise from her bed, but after that last sad duty had been discharged, she grew in strength rapidly, although no one expected of her that she should do otherwise than keep up the _rôle_ of a semi-invalid for some time to come. On the day following the funeral she was interviewed by an enterprising member of the staff of the county newspaper, whom, nothing loth, being indeed flattered by the notion that anything she might choose to tell the man would be deemed worthy of appearing in print, she supplied with an exaggerated and sentimental account of Mr. Hazeldine's last evening at home, not forgetting a description of sundry strange dreams she had been troubled with just before the sad event; and supplementing the whole with the mention of certain omens and portents presaging misfortune of which she had thought nothing at the time, but which had appealed to her since with all the force of neglected warnings. The narrative thus obtained, having been docked of sundry excrescences, and then touched up with sundry dramatic and picturesque details, was duly served up for the delectation of the public at large, greatly to the disgust of Clement and Edward Hazeldine.