She felt that she deserved a severe punishment, and that it would do her good to suffer for what she had done. She was even willing to be sent to prison, to be disgraced, and banished from the happy home at Woodville, whose hospitality she had abused. She felt that the penalty of her errors, whatever it might be, would do her good. She was filled with contrition and shame as she left the station; she hung her head, and did not dare to look the people she met in the face. The Fanny who went from Woodville a few days before had returned an entirely different being.
Slowly and gloomily she walked down the road that led to the residence of Mr. Grant. It seemed as though she had been absent a year, and everything looked strange to her, though the change was all in herself. All the currents of her former life had ceased to flow; the movements of the wheel of events had been abruptly suspended. What gladdened her before did not gladden her now, and what had once been a joy was now a sorrow. She felt as though she had been transferred from the old world, in which she had rejoiced in mischief and wrong, to a new world, whose hopes and joys had not yet been revealed to her.
She approached the cottage of Mr. Long, the constable, who had probably been engaged in the search for her since her departure. She went up to the door and knocked. Mr. Long had just finished his breakfast, and she was shown into the little parlor.
"So you have got back, Fanny Grant," said he, very coldly and sternly, as he entered the room where she stood waiting for him.
"I have," she replied, just raising her eyes from the floor.
"Where have you been?"
"In New York city."
"Where did you stay?"
"At the house of a poor woman in the upper part of the city."
"I thought so; or I should have found you. You have been a very bad girl, Fanny."