If Nevile's wife, with all her sins clotted on her, was dead, what was she
herself going to do, or allow to be done? She had yielded to love--her
first love and her last; but that had been long ago. Love, the fire, the
trembling and the music in her heart; pride, the trust, the loyalty, the
bliss of service; the wonder, the swooning, the glory like a sun upon her
--all gone, burned out, or worked out. Why, how long had it lasted her? Her
lips stretched to a bleak smile to think of it. Three months joy in
herself, three months joy of him; then work, incessant and absorbing; and
then the growth of a new pride, the pride of mind (for she found that she
had a brain), and of a new love--for she found that she loved the
creatures more than man. Education indeed! To draw from a child caught
unawares the force and the brooding love of an Earth-Goddess.
In the beginning, she could have told herself (but never did), she was to
be pitied, not blamed. Reticent among her free-speaking sisters, shy, what
the maids call "a deep one," rarely a talker, keeping always her own
counsel, she had first been moved to utter herself by the extreme
carelessness of Ingram whether she did so or not.
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