“That may be. And yet what I say remains just as true.”
“How could I meet VIOLENCE, for instance?”
“Impossible!”
She returned no reply. We walked in silence for some minutes. At length she said,
“My mother’s self-will amounts to madness, I do believe. I have yet to learn where she would stop of herself.”
“All self-will is madness,” I returned—stupidly enough For what is the use of making general remarks when you have a terrible concrete before you? “To want one’s own way just and only because it is one’s own way is the height of madness.”
“Perhaps. But when madness has to be encountered as if it were sense, it makes it no easier to know that it is madness.”
“Does your uncle give you no help?”
“He! Poor man! He is as frightened at her as I am. He dares not even go away. He did not know what he was coming to when he came to Oldcastle Hall. Dear uncle! I owe him a great deal. But for any help of that sort, he is of no more use than a child. I believe mamma looks upon him as half an idiot. He can do anything or everything but help one to live, to BE anything. Oh me! I AM so tired!”
And the PROUD lady, as I had thought her, perhaps not incorrectly, burst out crying.