She could not help imagining the talk about her in her absence; the discussion of the case in the country-houses or in the village.  To the village people, unused to the fine discussions which turn on motive and environment, and slow to revise an old opinion, she was just the daughter—­

She covered her eyes—­one hideous word ringing brutally, involuntarily, through her brain.  By a kind of miserable obsession the talk in the village public-houses shaped itself in her mind.  “Ay, they didn’t hang her because she was a lady.  She got off, trust her!  But if it had been you or me—­”

She rose, trembling, trying to shake off the horror, walking vaguely through the garden into the fields, as though to escape it.  But the horror pursued her, only in different forms.  Among the educated people—­people who liked dissecting “interesting” or “mysterious” crimes—­there had been no doubt long discussions of Sir James Chide’s letter to the Times, of Sir Francis Wing’s confession.  But through all the talk, rustic or refined, she heard the name of her mother bandied; forever soiled and dishonored; with no right to privacy or courtesy any more—­“Juliet Sparling” to all the world:  the loafer at the street corner—­the drunkard in the tavern—­

The thought of this vast publicity, this careless or cruel scorn of the big world—­toward one so frail, so anguished, so helpless in death—­clutched Diana many times in each day and night.  And it led to that perpetual image in the mind which we saw haunting her in the first hours of her grief, as though she carried her dying mother in her arms, passionately clasping and protecting her, their faces turned to each other, and hidden from all eyes besides.

Also, it deadened in her the sense of her own case—­in relation to the gossip of the neighborhood.  Ostrich-like, she persuaded herself that not many people could have known anything about her five days’ engagement.  Dear kind folk like the Roughsedges would not talk of it, nor Lady Lucy surely.  And Oliver himself—­never!

She had reached a point in the field walk where the hill-side opened to her right, and the little winding path was disclosed which had been to her on that mild February evening the path of Paradise.  She stood still a moment, looking upward, the deep sob of loss rising in her throat.

But she wrestled with herself, and presently turned back to the house, calm and self-possessed.  There were things to be thankful for.  She knew the worst.  And she felt herself singularly set free—­from ordinary conventions and judgments.  Nobody could ever quarrel with her if, now that she had come back, she lived her own life in her own way.  Nobody could blame her—­surely most people would approve her—­if she stood aloof from ordinary society, and ordinary gayeties for a while, at any rate.  Oh! she would do nothing singular or rude.  But she was often tired and weak—­not physically, but in mind.  Mrs. Roughsedge knew—­and Muriel.