There was poignant apology made and free, full loving pardon given all in that instant.
And Mabella wept out her pain on his breast.
But the shame and bitterness and self-contempt ate into Lanty’s heart like a venomous canker....
All this had been in the late autumn, just after the death of old Mr. Didymus, and now it was spring, and all through the winter Mabella had suffered, and hoped, and prayed, and despaired, and now it had come to this that Nathan had seen Lanty intoxicated in Brixton!
Sidney went back to the parsonage sorely troubled at heart. Vashti stood in the doorway.
Her beauty struck him freshly and vividly. It was his whim that she should dress in rich and beautiful stuffs, and Vashti was quite willing to subscribe to it. Dole groaned in spirit at the spectacle of its minister’s wife in such worldly garb as she wore, but Dole would have borne much at Sidney’s hands.
To-day she was clothed in a softly draped house-gown of Persian colouring, bound by a great cord girdle about her waist; it fell in long classic lines to her feet. Vashti’s face had gained in majesty and strength since her marriage. She was thinner, but that, instead of making against her beauty, raised it to a higher plane. There was a certain luxuriousness in her temperament which made her rejoice in the beautiful things with which Sidney surrounded her. She felt instinctively that she gained in forcefulness and in individuality from her setting. And, indeed, she fitted in well amid the beautiful pictures and hangings with which Sidney had adorned the enlarged parsonage. She had always seemed too stately, too queenly, for her commonplace calicoes and cashmeres. Her mien and stature had made her surroundings seem poor and inadequate. But in this gem of a house she shone like a jewel fitly set. Sidney had had his own way about the primary arrangements, and had installed a strong working woman in the kitchen with Sally, the ex-native of Blueberry Alley, as her under-study.
Vashti was perfectly content with this, and, whilst she knew all Dole was whispering about her, held upon her way undisturbed. She had developed, to Sidney’s intense joy, a very decided taste in the matter of books. Her mind was precisely of the calibre to take on a quick and brilliant polish. She read assiduously, and her perceptions were wonderfully acute.
Her beginnings in literary appreciation were not those of a weakling. Her mental powers were of such order that from the first she assimilated and digested the strong, rich food of the English classics.
She delighted in verse or prose which depicted the conflict of passion and will, of circumstances and human determination. Alas, her education only made her more determined to gain her purpose, more contemptuous of the obstacles which opposed her.