She sighed.
“I wish to Heaven as Nature had left her alone then, for she was married to a good man, and whatever she feels about him, there’s no doubt he was ready and willing enough to love her to the end of his life.”
“It often happens,” he answered, “and of course that sort of parting’s the saddest, where one party don’t want to part and t’other does. When both are fed up, then they can break loose with self-respect and mutual applause; but if one’s got to run away from the other, then the case is altered. But no doubt Ned Dingle will rise to it. He’s clever enough to know that it’s useless keeping a wife if she’s breaking her heart to escape. The fact that Medora has done this venturesome act and gone to another man, will show your son-in-law the game’s up. If she’d just gone off on her own, he might have hunted after her and won her back perhaps—if he wanted her back; but since she’s gone with somebody else and is ready to face all that means—well, that leaves her husband in no doubt of her meaning, don’t it?”
“None whatever,” admitted Lydia. “You’ve got a brain, Mr. Knox, so perhaps you’ll tell me what you think of Kellock. She was divided between ’em in the past and decided for Ned—wisely as I thought, because it always seemed to me that Jordan Kellock was too wrapped up in reading and learning and high views about labour to make a young woman happy. If you’d asked me, I should have said it weren’t in him to run away with another man’s wife. I should have thought he was such a well-drilled man in his mind that he’d have stopped loving Medora the moment he heard she was going to marry Dingle.”
“Kellock,” answered Philander Knox, “is all you say; but he’s young and he’s got a romantical turn, though it takes the practical shape of wanting to better the world at large. That’s all true, but he’s short of thirty still, and, under thirty, you never can say with certainty a man is complete in his make-up. He loved her, and if he thought she’d took a fatal mistake and married the wrong one, and if she told him so, as no doubt she did, then it’s not out of his character to find himself loving her again. And the instinct to fight the cause of the weak, which is a part of the man, wouldn’t be any less strong because he happened to love the weak party for herself. So it all fits in very natural so far, and your daughter may trust Kellock to champion her and be very tender and jealous and all that. He’ll treat her well without a doubt.”
“And what sort of a husband will he make for my girl?”
“That I can’t say,” answered Knox. “For the reason that I don’t know what your girl wants. If Ned didn’t suit her, then as Kellock’s just the opposite of him in every way, perhaps he will.”
“Ned did suit her—that’s the shocking thing,” declared Lydia. “He suited her so perfectly that he suited her too well, if you can understand that. There was all sunshine and no shade, and Medora, so far as I can see, instead of blessing her good luck got sick of so much uneventful happiness, like a child gets sick of too much barley-sugar. Then she turned by a sort of restless instinct to find a bit of change. Of course she’s said for months that she was miserable; but she invented most of her misery in my opinion.”
“Very interesting, and no doubt you know. But we middle-aged people can always see the young looking for trouble. ’Tis part of their natural curiosity and daring. They don’t know they’re born in fact, and that’s a thing you can’t teach a person. Each has got to learn it themselves. And some never do. We’ll watch and pray, Mrs. Trivett. That’s about all we can do for the young. And now I’ll tell you what I came about. And I’ll also promise that, so far as it lies in my power, I’ll befriend Medora if she comes back here.”
“She can’t come back—she can’t do that.”