I mean that I have committed social suicide, and I do not wish to be saved either for my friends sake or for my own. I ask you kindly to get my death inserted in the Times and the other daily papers.
Your actual death?
A statement that on such a day died the Honourable Arminell Inglett, only daughter of the late Lord Lamerton. That will suffice; it proclaims to society that I have ceased to belong to it. Of course my dear step-mother and my aunt and the family solicitors shall know the truth. I have money that comes to me from my mother. A statement of my death in the Times will not constitute legal death, but it will suffice to establish my social death.
You are taking an extraordinary and unwarrantable course.
Extraordinary it may be, but not unwarranted. I have the justification within, in my conscience. When one has done that which is wrong, one is called to suffer for it, and the conscience is never cleansed and restored without expiating pains. If I were to return to Orleigh I would die morally, of that I am sure, because it would be a shirking of the consequences which my foolish act has brought down on me.
There may be something in that, said Welsh.