"We ... we are all in Christ's hands," she said.... "We must tell him."
III
It appeared to the girl as if she were moving on a kind of set stage,
with every movement and incident designed beforehand, in a play that was
itself a kind of destiny--above all, when she went at last into Robin's
cell and saw him standing there, and found it to be that in which so
long ago she had talked with Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert....
The great realities were closing round her, as irresistible as wheels
and bars. There was scarcely a period in her life, scarcely a voluntary
action of hers for good or evil, that did not furnish some part of this
vast machine in whose grip both she and her friend were held so fast. No
calculation on her part could have contrived so complete a climax; yet
hardly a calculation that had not gone astray from that end to which she
had designed it. It was as if some monstrous and ironical power had been
beneath and about her all her life long, using those thoughts and
actions that she had intended in one way to the development of another.
First, it was she that had first turned her friend's mind to the life of
a priest. Had she submitted to natural causes, she would have been his
wife nine years ago; they would have been harassed no doubt and
troubled, but no more. It was she again that had encouraged his return
to Derbyshire. If it had not been for that, and for the efforts she had
made to do what she thought good work for God, he might have been sent
elsewhere.
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