She had been madly angry with
him when he came to her with the story of his love for another woman,
and had madly shown her anger; but yet she had striven to get for him
the wife he wanted, though in doing so she would have abandoned one
of the dearest purposes of her life. She had moved heaven and earth
for him,--her heaven and earth,--when there was danger that he would
lose his seat in Parliament. She had encountered the jealousy of
her husband with scorn,--and had then deserted him because he was
jealous. And all this she did with a consciousness of her own virtue
which was almost as sublime as it was ill-founded. She had been
wrong. She confessed so much to herself with bitter tears. She had
marred the happiness of three persons by the mistake she had made in
early life. But it had not yet occurred to her that she had sinned.
To her thinking the jealousy of her husband had been preposterous and
abominable, because she had known,--and had therefore felt that he
should have known,--that she would never disgrace him by that which
the world calls falsehood in a wife.
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