That
she loved this man, Phineas Finn, with a passionate devotion of which
the other woman could know nothing she was quite sure. Love him! Had
she not been true to him and to his interests from the very first
day in which he had come among them in London, with almost more than
a woman's truth? She knew and recalled to her memory over and over
again her own one great sin,--the fault of her life. When she was, as
regarded her own means, a poor woman, she had refused to be this poor
man's wife, and had given her hand to a rich suitor. But she had done
this with a conviction that she could so best serve the interests of
the man in regard to whom she had promised herself that her feeling
should henceforth be one of simple and purest friendship. She had
made a great effort to carry out that intention, but the effort had
been futile. She had striven to do her duty to a husband whom she
disliked,--but even in that she had failed. At one time she had been
persistent in her intercourse with Phineas Finn, and at another had
resolved that she would not see him.
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