But in an hour, when her pulse again beat temperately, she began to adjust the relations between herself and these surroundings.  They no longer oppressed her; the sense of superiority which had been pleasant at a distance re-established itself, and gave her a defiant strength such as she had hoped for.  So far from the anxieties of her conscience being aggravated by return to Bartles, she could not recover that mode of feeling which had harassed her for the last few months.  Like so many other things, it had become insubstantial.  It might revive, but for the present she was safe against it.

And this self-possession was greatly aided by Mrs. Fletcher’s talk.  Prom her sister-in-law’s letters, though for the last two years they had been few, Miriam had formed some conception of the progress of Bartles opinion concerning herself.  Now she led Mrs. Fletcher to converse with native candour on this subject, and in the course of the evening, which they spent alone, all the town’s gossip since Miriam’s going abroad was gradually reported.  Mrs. Fletcher was careful to prevent the inference (which would have been substantially correct) that she herself had been the source of such rumours as had set wagging the tongues of dissident Bartles; she spoke with much show of reluctance, and many protestations of the wrath that had been excited in her by those who were credulous of ill.  Miriam confined herself to questioning; she made no verbal comments.  But occasionally she averted her face with a haughty smile.

Mrs. Welland, the once-dreaded rival, had established an unassailable supremacy.  From her, according to Mrs. Fletcher, proceeded most of the scandalous suggestions which had attached themselves to Mrs. Baske’s name.  This lady had not scrupled to state it as a fact in her certain knowledge that Mrs. Baske was become a Papist.  To this end, it seemed, was the suspicion of Bartles mainly directed—­the Scarlet Woman throned by the Mediterranean had made a victim of her who was once a light in the re-reformed faith.  That was the reason, said Mrs. Welland, why the owner of Redbeck House continued to dwell in foreign parts.  If ever she came back at all, it would be as an insidious enemy; but more likely she would never return; possibly her life would close in a convent, like that of other hapless Englishwomen whose personal property excited the covetousness of the Pope.  In the Bartles newspaper there had appeared, from time to time, enigmatic paragraphs, which Mrs. Welland and her intimates made the subject of much gossip; these passages alluded either to a certain new chapel which seemed very long in getting its foundations laid, or to a certain former inhabitant of Bartles, who found it necessary, owing to the sad state of her health, to make long residence in Roman Catholic countries.  Mrs. Fletcher had preserved these newspapers, and now produced them.  Miriam read and smiled.

“Why didn’t it occur to them to suggest that I had become an atheist?”