“My heart is not so sad as you think. You do not believe me: but that is because you do not believe what I am sure of—that he is not to blame for anything that has happened—that, at least, he has only been mistaken,—that there his been no fickleness, no selfishness, in him. I could not speak of this, even to you, Maria, if it were not a duty to him. You must not be left to suppose from my silence that he is to blame, as you think he is. I suffer from no sense of injury from him. I got over that, long ago.”
Maria would not say, as she thought, “You had to get over it, then?”
“It makes me very unhappy to think how he is suffering,—how much more he has to bear than I; so much more than the separation and the blank. He cannot trust me as I trusted him; and that is, indeed, to be without consolation.”
“Do men ever trust as women do?”
“Yes, Edward does. If he were to go to India for twenty years, he would know, as certainly as I should, that Hester would be widowed in every thought till his return. And the time will come when Philip will know this as certainly of me. It is but a little while yet that I have waited, Maria; but it does sometimes seem a weary waiting.”
Maria took her friend’s hand, in token of the sympathy she could not speak,—so much of hopelessness was there mingled with it.
“I know you and others think that this waiting is to go on for ever.”
“No, love; not so.”
“Or that a certainty which is even worse will come some day. But it will be otherwise. His love can no more be quenched or alienated by the slanders of a wicked woman, than the sun can be put out by an eclipse, or sent to enlighten another world, leaving us mourning.”
“You judge by your own soul, Margaret; and that should be a faithful guide. You judge him by your own soul,—and how much by this?” she added, with a smile, fixing her eyes on the turquoise ring, which was Philip’s gift, and which, safely guarded, was on a finger of the hand she held.