Margaret was ashamed. Her nature was singularly truthful, and it troubled
her extraordinarily that she had lied to her greatest friend. Something
stronger than herself seemed to impel her. She would have given much to
confess her two falsehoods, but had not the courage. She could not bear
that Susie's implicit trust in her straightforwardness should be
destroyed; and the admission that Oliver Haddo had been there would
entail a further acknowledgment of the nameless horrors she had
witnessed. Susie would think her mad.
There was a knock at the door; and Margaret, her nerves shattered by all
that she had endured, could hardly restrain a cry of terror. She feared
that Haddo had returned. But it was Arthur Burdon. She greeted him with
a passionate relief that was unusual, for she was by nature a woman of
great self-possession. She felt excessively weak, physically exhausted
as though she had gone a long journey, and her mind was highly wrought.
Margaret remembered that her state had been the same on her first arrival
in Paris, when, in her eagerness to get a preliminary glimpse of its
marvels, she had hurried till her bones ached from one celebrated
monument to another.
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