“If you are quite determined about it—­”

“I am quite determined.  What is the use of the place to me?  I never shall go there.  What is the use even of the money that comes to me?  I have no purpose for it.  I have nothing to do with it.”

There was something in her tone as she said this which well filled him with pity.

“You should remember,” he said, “how short a time it is since you became a widow.  Things will be different with you soon.”

“My clothes will be different, if you mean that,” she answered, “but I do not know that there will be any other change in me.  But I am wrong to trouble you with all this.  If you will let Mr. Courton’s lawyer know, with my compliments to Mrs. Courton, that I have heard that she would like to have the place, and that I do not want it, I will be obliged to you.”  Mr. Turnbull having by this time perceived that she was quite in earnest, took his leave, having promised to do her bidding.

In this interview she had told her lawyer only a part of the plan which was now running in her head.  As for giving up Ongar Park, she took to herself no merit for that.  The place had been odious to her ever since she had endeavored to establish herself there, and had found that the clergyman’s wife would not speak to her—­that even her own housekeeper would hardly condescend to hold converse with her.  She felt that she would be a dog in the manger to keep the place in her possession.  But she had thoughts beyond this—­resolutions only as yet half formed as to a wider surrender.  She had disgraced herself, ruined herself; robbed herself of all happiness by the marriage she had made.  Her misery had not been simply the misery of that lord’s lifetime.  As might have been expected, that was soon over.  But an enduring wretchedness had come after that from which she saw no prospect of escape.  What was to be her future life, left as she was and would be, in desolation?  If she were to give it all up—­all the wealth that had been so ill-gotten—­might there not then be some hope of comfort for her?

She had been willing enough to keep Lord Ongar’s money, and use it for the purposes of her own comfort, while she had still hoped that comfort might come from it.  The remembrance of all that she had to give had been very pleasant to her, as long as she had hoped that Harry Clavering would receive it at her hands.  She had not at once felt that the fruit had all turned to ashes.  But now—­now that Harry was gone from her—­now that she had no friend left to her whom she could hope to make happy by her munificence, the very knowledge of her wealth was a burden to her.  And as she thought of her riches in these first days of her desertion, as she had indeed been thinking since Cecilia Burton had been with her, she came to understand that she was degraded by their acquisition.  She had done that which had been unpardonably bad, and she felt like Judas when he stood with the price of his treachery in his hand.  He had given up his money, and would not she do as much?  There had been a moment in which she had nearly declared all her purpose to the lawyer, but she was held back by the feeling that she ought to make her plans certain before she communicated them to him.