She intensely rejoiced that Caspar Goodwood was gone; there was
something in having thus got rid of him that was like the payment, for
a stamped receipt, of some debt too long on her mind. As she felt
the glad relief she bowed her head a little lower; the sense was
there, throbbing in her heart; it was part of her emotion, but it
was a thing to be ashamed of- it was profane and out of place. It
was not for some ten minutes that she rose from her knees, and even
when she came back to the sitting-room her tremor had not quite
subsided. It had had, verily, two causes: part of it was to be
accounted for by her long discussion with Mr. Goodwood, but it might
be feared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the
exercise of her power. She sat down in the same chair again and took
up her book, but without going through the form of opening the volume.
She leaned back, with that low, soft, aspiring murmur with which she
often uttered her response to accidents of which the brighter side was
not superficially obvious, and yielded to the satisfaction of having
refused two ardent suitors in a fortnight. That love of liberty of
which she had given Caspar Goodwood so bold a sketch was as yet almost
exclusively theoretic; she had not been able to indulge it on a
large scale.
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