Mr. Grenville stopped in his promenade, and with a look on his face as of one about to drink medicine, took down Jeremy Taylor from a shelf and turned over the pages till he came to that divine's remarks on the widowed state. Tightening his lips, he shut up the book after a moment with something like a bang, and replaced it. Yes, second marriages ... But, after all, he was going on rather fast.
(2)
When the Rector returned, late that afternoon, from visiting his parishioners, he was rather surprised to find Horatia sitting on a stool in front of his study fire, which had only just been lit. As soon as he had sat down beside her she put her head on his knee, and said, with the directness of a child,
"Papa, dear, I want to talk to you. I am so unhappy! I must talk to someone."
The Rector put his hand on her hair, half alarmed, half pleased that she had come to him. "What is it, my love?" he said tenderly. "Only this morning I was thinking of you and wishing I could comfort you."
"O Papa, I can't say it to you. I am so wicked!" And she began to cry.
"My dearest child," said the Rector, astonished, "what do you mean? How can you have been wicked? Come, then, tell me all about it. There is nothing you cannot say to me. I can understand how you loved him in spite—in spite of many things."
"But that is just it," answered Horatia, sobbing. "I did not really love him." Then she went on in an outburst, "You think now that I'm grieving for him because I loved him. It isn't true. I'm grieving just because I didn't love him. I want to say to people, Don't be sorry for me, don't look at my black dress! I am a wicked woman, I did not love my husband. I did not even do my duty."
Mr. Grenville put an arm round his daughter's shoulders and bent over her. "My child, you mustn't talk like this. We know that poor Armand was not all that he might have been to you, and I daresay I know more than you think. You married him for better or for worse, and in some ways ... for although he is dead we must face facts ... I have little doubt it was for worse. It was a shock to your innocence to find out much that you ought never to have known. I ought to have warned you more, to have told you more. My darling child, your old father has been greatly to blame. If only your dear mother had been alive!"
"Papa, you did warn me," she said, drying her eyes. "I was very wilful; I thought I knew best. But it seemed then as if Armand came and opened a new world to me, and I thought it was love ... but it could not have been ... and then I began to hear things ... and before Maurice was born..."