Returning home and confessing is the path that costs her most. Elopement with Stephen would eventually have conferred respectability; marriage to Philip would have had a Romeo-and-Juliet-like poetic justice to it. As it is, the village places the blame on Maggie. She is a “designing bold girl” who stole her cousin’s fiancé, and it is to be hoped that she leaves—goes to America, or anywhere—and not “taint” their air any longer. “Life stretched before her as one act of penitence, and all she craved, as she dwelt on her future lot, was something to guarantee her from more falling: her own weakness haunted her like a vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace conceivable except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge.” There are moments in life where you shock yourself by what you want and what you’ve done, and they stop you from being able to trust yourself. You may not even be on the wrong path, but your ease in your own reactions has gone. You feel tired, crouched, mistrustful. That’s where Maggie gets to, but it’s not an entirely unhopeful place after all.