She herself felt perfectly safe. She was neither sentimental nor susceptible, for if she had been one or the other she must by this time have had some “experience,” as she vaguely called it. But she had not. She had never even liked any man so much as she liked this man whom she hated. This was not a contradiction of facts, which, as Euclid teaches us, is impossible. She liked him for what she saw, and she hated him for what she knew.
One day, when Mrs. Bowring was present, the conversation turned upon a recent novel in which the hero, after making love to a woman, found that he had made a mistake, and promptly made love to her sister, whom he married in the end.
“I despise that sort of man!” cried Clare, rather vehemently, and flashing her eyes upon Johnstone.
For a moment she had thought that she could surprise him, that he would look away, or change colour, or in some way betray his most guilty conscience. But he did not seem in the least disturbed, and met her glance as calmly as ever.
“Do you?” he asked with an indifferent laugh. “Why? The fellow was honest, at all events. He found that he didn’t love the one to whom he was engaged, and that he did love the other. So he set things straight before it was too late, and married the right one. He was a very sensible man, and it must have taken courage to be so honest about it.”
“Courage!” exclaimed the young girl in high scorn. “He was a brute and a coward!”
“Dear me!” laughed Brook. “Don’t you admit that a man may ever make a mistake?”
“When a man makes a mistake of that sort, he should either cut his throat, or else keep his word to the woman and try to make her happy.”
“That’s a violent view—really! It seems to me that when a man has made a mistake the best thing to do is to go and say so. The bigger the mistake, the harder it is to acknowledge it, and the more courage it needs. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Bowring?”
“The mistake of all mistakes is a mistake in marriage,” said the elder woman, looking away. “There is no remedy for that, but death. ”