“He has no home now, poor fellow.”
“Whose fault was it? God only knows. Where is his wife?”
“She has gone to Paris.”
“She has gone to the right place if she wants to play the fool. But there, now, God forbid I should judge her in the dark. Women should stand by women—considering.”
“Considering?”
“What they may have to put up with. It is easy to see faults in others. I have sometimes met with people who should see faults in themselves. They are rather uncommon, though.”
“I am sure Basil Stanhope will be miserable all his life. He will break his heart, I do believe.”
“Not so. A good heart is hard to break, it grows strong in trouble. Basil Stanhope’s body will fail long before his heart does; and even so an end must come to life, and after that peace or what God wills.”
This scant sympathy Ethel found to be the usual tone among her acquaintances. St. Jude’s got a new rector and a new idol, and the Stanhope affair was relegated to the limbo of things “it was proper to forget.”
So the weeks of the long winter went by, and Ethel in the joy and hope of her own love-life naturally put out of her mind the sorrow of lives she could no longer help or influence. Indeed, as to Dora, there were frequent reports of her marvelous social success in Paris; and Ethel did not doubt Stanhope had found some everlasting gospel of holy work to comfort his desolation. And then also