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Rh marriage as a way of escape, much as Nathaniel Cawthorne simply played at first with the idea of murder as a way of escape for his mother. But every time Reba considered the possibility it set her heart to thumping with its appeal. If she should marry the stranger, then the day-in day-out invariableness of existence in Ridgefield would be relieved by the feature of uncertainty. He would be absent for three years, and after three years, when she was twenty-eight or nine would she not welcome anybody, whoever he was, who had the authority to claim her for new worlds, new scenes, new adventures? Only a husband could possess such authority. Only a husband could force Aunt Augusta's return to her old post.

Her mother preferred Aunt Augusta's ministrations to hers. It wouldn't be unkind to the invalid. She, Reba herself, would be the only one who would suffer from the results of such an act. And she might suffer. Of course there were risks—big risks, she supposed. But hadn't her grandfather run risks, dared, defied, hacked his way through, Cousin Pattie had said, to his success? And wasn't her own weak, trembling, inglorious parent an example of the kind of man who was dominated by doubts and fears? Reba argued that she would be sure to suffer if she meekly accepted a lifelong sentence of thankless service in Ridgefield. Perhaps a wise adviser would tell her that she would likewise be sure to suffer if she married in any such abnormal, abortive fashion. Well, possibly. Grant it. But it would be a different kind of suffering, anyway!

During the tormenting hours of indecision which