Ivor, however, replied that he hoped to be back at Ivescar in plenty of time for tea, and that he would not trouble about food till then. Gundred smiled and sighed to think how tragically he was mistaken. Her feelings were firm and rigid. Long thought and long anxiety had crystallized now into a mystic ecstasy of certainty. In the previous weeks she had known sore vacillations and distresses. But now the friendly Powers had made everything plain once more. Until this morning she had felt a certain weakness and need of earthly counsel; as a sound Evangelical Protestant, she had, of course, a proper pious horror of the priesthood and the confessional; and yet there had been times when she would have liked to pour forth her troubles to a fellow-creature. Had she consulted a doctor rather than a priest, he might have told her that an _idée fixe_ is not the healthiest companion for a woman of self-contained and secret nature, and that the previous generations of March and Brakelond, feeble-minded or eccentric, held out a special prospect of disaster when such an _idée fixe_ was cherished by herself. However, by now, the time for warnings and advice was past. Gundred was fully possessed by the mania that had arisen so naturally from her devout habits and her weak mind, wrought on by jealousy and by a tyrannous consciousness of being herself the chosen of Heaven. Now she faced what she foresaw to be the punishment of her enemy, with the cold calm of Jael. She was glad that Heaven had taken the affair so promptly into its own hands. Once before, her Celestial Ally, she remembered, had intervened by a miracle to relieve her from the perilous presence of Isabel Darrell. Now the same prodigy of favour was to be repeated in a different form, and who was she to carp at the tender mercies of the Almighty? With folded hands and placid heart she sat by to let matters take their appointed way. Nothing in all the world would so utterly have horrified her as the statement that she desired the death of Ivor Restormel. She repeated to herself again and again that she wanted nothing of the sort, but had perfect trust in the wisdom of the All-wise. She had no desires of any kind; nothing but pure faith. And to wish for anyone’s death, how very abominable and unchristian and unwomanly! Far, far from her gentle mind was any such truculent passion; the utmost that she would own to herself was that she would find it impossible to grieve when Heaven had taken her enemy to its mercy. And, as for altering the course of events, that was clearly out of the question. She could only await what Heaven should send. She now forgot that she herself, as it were, had given Heaven a nudge in the matter. She deliberately disclaimed all responsibility, and plumed herself on the mildness and resignation that her conduct showed. Stiff and calm in what by now was nothing short of monomania, the unfortunate woman sat and smiled, as her own damnation passed onwards to its accomplishment.