* * * * *

Thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed. The flushes of

indignation which had passed over her, as she gathered this man's opinion

of herself, combined with flushes of grief and shame when she considered

that Swithin--her dear Swithin--was perfectly acquainted with this

cynical view of her nature; that, reject it as he might, and as he

unquestionably did, such thoughts of her had been implanted in him, and

lay in him. Stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deep

for germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface and

aerate into life.

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The humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure; the

mortification--she had known nothing like it till now. But this was not

all. There succeeded a feeling in comparison with which resentment and

mortification were happy moods--a miserable conviction that this old man

who spoke from the grave was not altogether wrong in his speaking; that

he was only half wrong; that he was, perhaps, virtually right. Only

those persons who are by nature affected with that ready esteem for

others' positions which induces an undervaluing of their own, fully

experience the deep smart of such convictions against self--the wish for

annihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling that

at length we, our best and firmest friend, cease to believe in our cause.

Viviette could hear the people coming out of church on the other side of

the garden wall. Their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away;

the bell rang for lunch; and she went in. But her life during that

morning and afternoon was wholly introspective. Knowing the full

circumstances of his situation as she knew them now--as she had never

before known them--ought she to make herself the legal wife of Swithin

St. Cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any price to him? such was

the formidable question which Lady Constantine propounded to her startled

understanding. As a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her

charity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. Save Thyself was

sound Old Testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in the

New. But was there a line of conduct which transcended mere

self-preservation? and would it not be an excellent thing to put it in

practice now?

That she had wronged St. Cleeve by marrying him--that she would wrong him

infinitely more by completing the marriage--there was, in her opinion, no

doubt. She in her experience had sought out him in his inexperience, and

had led him like a child. She remembered--as if it had been her fault,

though it was in fact only her misfortune--that she had been the one to

go for the license and take up residence in the parish in which they were

wedded. He was now just one-and-twenty. Without her, he had all the

world before him, six hundred a year, and leave to cut as straight a road

to fame as he should choose: with her, this story was negatived.




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