“Not at all,” returned Mrs. John Wilmeter, slightly smiling. “I put all thought of contention with a husband out of the question. You know I have not been married long enough for that, and I could almost hope that the first day of such a scene might be the last of my life! John would cease to love me, if I quarrelled with him.”
“You will be an extraordinary pair, my dear, if scenes, as you call them, do not occasionally occur between you.”
“I do not expect faultlessness in Jack; and, as for myself, I know that I have very many motes to get rid of, and which I trust may, in a measure, be done. But let us return to the case of a woman, young, well-educated, handsome, rich to superfluity, and intellectual.”
“All of which are very good things, my child,” observed Mad. de Larocheforte, with a smile so covert as to be scarcely seen, though it betrayed to her companion the consciousness of her making the application intended—“what next?”
“Wilful, a lover of power, and what she called independent.”
“Good and bad together. The two first, very bad, I acknowledge; the last, very good.”
“What do you understand by independence? If it mean a certain disposition to examine and decide for ourselves, under all the obligations of duty, then it is a good thing, a very good thing, as you say; but if it merely mean a disposition to do as one pleases, to say what one likes, and to behave as one may at the moment fancy, then it strikes me as a very bad thing. This independence, half the time, is only pride and obstinacy, dear mamma!”
“Well, what if it is? Men are proud and obstinate, too; and they must be fought with their own weapons.”
“It is easy to make smart speeches, but, by the difficulties I meet with in endeavouring to conquer my own heart, I know it is very hard to do right. I know I am a very young monitress—”
“Never mind that. Your youth gives piquancy to your instructions. I like to hear you.”