“Oh, what shall I do? What is my duty?”
The part which hurt her most of all was the terrible certainty that Arthur did not love her, as he loved Anna Ruthven. She seemed intuitively to understand it all, and see how in an unguarded moment he had offered himself to save her good name from gossip, and how ever since his life had been a constant struggle to do his duty by her.
“Poor Arthur,” she sobbed, “yours has been a hard lot, trying to act the love you did not feel; but it shall be so no longer, for I will set you free.”
This was her final decision, but she did not reach it till a day and night had passed, during which she lay with her face turned to the wall, saying she wanted nothing except to be left alone.
“When I can, I’ll tell you,” she had said to Fanny and her aunt, who insisted upon knowing the cause of her distress. “When I can, I’ll tell you all about it. Leave me alone till then.”
So they ceased to worry her, but Fanny sat constantly in the room watching the motionless figure, which took whatever she offered, but otherwise gave no sign of life until the morning of the second day, when it turned slowly towards her, and the livid lips quivered piteously and made an attempt to smile as they said:
“I can tell you now. I have made up my mind.”
Fanny’s eyes were dim with the truest tears she had ever shed when Lucy’s story was ended, and her voice was very low as she asked:
“And you mean to give him up at this late hour?”
“Yes, I mean to give him up. I have been over the entire ground many times, even to the deep humiliation of what people will say, and I have come each time to the same conclusion. It is right that Arthur should be released, and I shall release him.”