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.
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