She brushed past Mrs. Parkin in the passage, bidding her an incoherent good-bye: she was instinctively impatient to escape to the protection of familiar surroundings. Inside the house, she felt helpless, dizzy: the melodrama of the whole scene had stunned her senses, and pity for him was rushing through her in waves of pulsing emotion. As she passed the various landmarks, which she had noted on her outward journey--a group of Scotch firs, a roofless cattle-shed, a pile of felled trees--each seemed to wear an altered aspect. With what a strange suddenness it had all happened! Yesterday the groom had brought back word that he was in delirium, and had told her of the loneliness of the house. It had seemed so sad, his lying ill, all alone: the thought had preyed on her conscience, till she had started to drive out there to inquire if there were anything she could do to help him. Now, every corner round which the cart swung, lengthened the stretch of road that separated her from that tragic scene in his room.... Perhaps it was not right for her to drive home and leave him? But she couldn’t bear to stay: it was all so dreadful. Besides, she assured herself, she could do no good. There was the doctor, and that old woman who nursed him--they would see to everything.... Poor, poor Alec--alone in that grey-walled cottage, pitched at the far end of this long, bleak valley--the half-darkened room--his wasted, feverish face--and his _knowing_ that he could not live--it all came back to her vividly, and she shivered as if with cold. Death seemed hideous, awful, almost wicked in the cruelty of its ruthlessness. And the homeward drive loomed ahead, interminably--for two hours she would have to wait with the dreadful, flaring remembrance of it all--two hours--for the horse was tired, and it was thirteen miles, a man by the roadside had told her.... He was noble-hearted, saint-like.... Her pity for him welled up once more, and she convinced herself that she could have loved him, worshipped him, been worthy of him as a husband--and now he lay dying. He had revealed his whole nature to her, it seemed. No one had ever understood, as she did now, what a fine character he was in reality. Her cheeks grew hot with indignation and shame, as she remembered how she had heard people laugh at him behind his back, refer to him mockingly as the ‘love-sick curate.’ And all this while--for five whole years--he had gone on caring for her--thinking of her each day, reading her letters, recalling the things she used to say--yes, those were his very words. Before, she had never suspected that it was in his nature to take it so horribly tragically; yet, somehow, directly he had fixed his eyes on her in that excited way, she had half-guessed it....