He knew what he had to expect.
He tasted well in advance the miserable and half ludicrous shame of a man who has been openly jilted by a woman.

He tasted, too, the covertly whispered suspicion which had perhaps never quite departed, and which now was surely raised to new life by Dorothy's loud cries of accusation.

He knew that he was utterly defenceless under both shame and suspicion, being fettered fast by his own tardy but stern sense of duty and loyalty.

It seemed to him at first that he would be crippled beyond cure in his whole life if he should stay where he was; and then he felt the spring of the fighting instinct within him, and said proudly to himself that he would turn his back upon nothing.
He would brave it all.
There was a light wind, and now and then the young trees in the lane were driven into a soft tumult of whispering leaves.

Burr did not notice when into this voice of the wind and this noise as of a crowd of softly scurrying ghosts there came a crisp rustle of muslin and a quick footstep up the lane.