On returning to England, and in due course to the castle, everything bore in upon his mind the exceeding sorrowfulness--he would not say humiliation--of continuing to act in his former capacity for a woman who, from seeming more than a dear friend, had become less than an acquaintance.
So he resigned; but now, as the train drew on into that once beloved tract of country, the images which met his eye threw him back in point of emotion to very near where he had been before making himself a stranger here.

The train entered the cutting on whose brink he had walked when the carriage containing Paula and her friends surprised him the previous summer.

He looked out of the window: they were passing the well-known curve that led up to the tunnel constructed by her father, into which he had gone when the train came by and Paula had been alarmed for his life.

There was the path they had both climbed afterwards, involuntarily seizing each other's hand; the bushes, the grass, the flowers, everything just the same: '-- ---Here was the pleasant place, And nothing wanting was, save She, alas!' When they came out of the tunnel at the other end he caught a glimpse of the distant castle-keep, and the well-remembered walls beneath it.

The experience so far transcended the intensity of what is called mournful pleasure as to make him wonder how he could have miscalculated himself to the extent of supposing that he might pass the spot with controllable emotion.
On entering Markton station he withdrew into a remote corner of the carriage, and closed his eyes with a resolve not to open them till the embittering scenes should be passed by.