Page:Tales of Three Cities (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1884).djvu/312

300 "P.S. The more I think of it, the more convinced I am that you will worry now about the danger for Rachel. Why did I drop the poison into your mind? Of course I did n't say a word about you or Florimond."

This epistle reached Mrs. Daintry, as I have intimated, about an hour after her letter to her sister-in-law had been posted; but it is characteristic of her that she did not for a moment regret having made a retractation rather humble in form, and which proved, after all, scarcely to have been needed. The delight of having done that duty carried her over the sense of having given herself away. Her sister-in-law spoke from knowledge when she wrote that phrase about Susan's now beginning to worry from the opposite point of view. Her conscience, like the good Homer, might sometimes nod; but when it woke, it woke with a start; and for many a day afterward its vigilance was feverish. For the moment, her emotions were mingled. She thought Lucretia very strange, and that she was scarcely in a position to talk about one's going from one extreme to the other. It was good news to her that Rachel Torrance would probably be on the ground after all, and she was delighted that on Lucretia the responsibility of such a fact should rest. This responsibility she now already, after her revulsion, as we know, regarded as grave; she exhaled an almost luxurious