Ivor, like everybody else, must have read the telegram. He might
naturally conclude I would be half-mobbed by reporters; and as it
was clear he had once been fond of me--hateful as I felt it even to
admit the fact to myself--he might really have desired to save me
annoyance and trouble. It was degrading, to be sure, even to think I
owed anything of any sort to such a wretch as that murderer; yet in
a certain corner of my heart I couldn't help being thankful to him.
But how strange to feel I had come there on purpose to hunt him
down! How horrible that I must so repay good with evil!

Then a still more ghastly thought surged up suddenly in my mind. Why
on earth did he think I was going to Palmyra? Was it possible he
fancied I loved him still--that I wanted to marry him? Could he
imagine I'd come out just to fling myself at his feet and ask him to
take me? Could he suppose I'd forgotten all the rest of my past
life, and his vile act as well, and yet remembered alone what
little love, if any, I ever had borne him? It was incredible that
any man, however wicked, however conceited, should think such folly
as that--that a girl would marry her father's murderer; and yet what
might not one expect from a man who, after having shot my father,
had still the inconceivable and unbelievable audacity to take
deliberate steps for securing my own comfort and happiness? From
such a wretch as that, one might look for almost anything!

For ten minutes or more, as we whirled along the line in the Pullman
car, I was too dazed and confused to notice anything around me. My
brain swam vaguely, filled full with wild whirling thoughts; the
strange drama of my life, always teeming with mysteries, seemed to
culminate in this reception in an unknown land by people who
appeared almost to know more about my business than I myself did. I