" He began to look after the estates
again; he took all that trouble over getting off the gardener's
daughter who had murdered her baby. He shook hands smilingly
with every farmer in the market-place. He addressed two political
meetings; he hunted twice. Leonora made him a frightful scene
about spending the two hundred pounds on getting the gardener's
daughter acquitted. Everything went on as if the girl had never
existed. It was very still weather.
Well, that is the end of the story. And, when I come to look at it I
see that it is a happy ending with wedding bells and all. The
villains--for obviously Edward and the girl were villains--have
been punished by suicide and madness. The heroine--the perfectly
normal, virtuous and slightly deceitful heroine--has become the
happy wife of a perfectly normal, virtuous and slightly deceitful
husband. She will shortly become a mother of a perfectly normal,
virtuous slightly deceitful son or daughter. A happy ending, that is
what it works out at.
I cannot conceal from myself the fact that I now dislike Leonora.
Without doubt I am jealous of Rodney Bayham. But I don't know
whether it is merely a jealousy arising from the fact that I desired
myself to possess Leonora or whether it is because to her were
sacrificed the only two persons that I have ever really
loved--Edward Ashburnham and Nancy Rufford.
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