“In his eyes!” repeated Mrs. Noel. “Is there any doubt that it would be so in any eyes?”
“Yes,” said Christine, “there is great doubt.”
It was well for her that she had not hoped too much—well that she had kept continually in mind the awful value of the revelation she had come to make. If she had been sanguine and confident the look that now came over the face of Noel’s mother would have been a harder thing to bear. But Christine was all prepared for it. It wounded, but it did not surprise nor disturb her perfect calm. There was a distinct change in the tone with which Mrs. Noel now said:
“If you have been unfortunate, poor girl, and have been led into trouble without fault of your own, as may possibly be, no one could pity you more than I. I can imagine such a case, and I could not look at you and think any evil of you. But if you know the world at all, you must know that these things—let a woman be utterly free from fault herself—carry their inexorable consequences.”
“I know the world but little,” said Christine, “and yet I know that.”
“Then, my dear child, you cannot wonder that the woman so unfortunately situated is thought to be debarred from honorable marriage.”
“I do not wonder when I meet with this judgment in the world or in you. I only wondered when I found in your son a being too high for it—a being to whom right is right and pureness is pureness, as it is to God. You will remember, madame, that it was your son who claimed that I was not debarred from honorable marriage, and not I. Oh, I have suffered—you were right. No wonder that the sign of it is branded on my forehead for all the world to see. I have suffered in a way as far beyond the worst pain you have ever known as that pain of yours has been from pleasure. You have known death in its most awful form when it took from you your dearest ones, but I have known death too. My little baby, who was like the very core of my heart, round which the heartstrings twisted, and the clinging flesh was wrapped, was torn away from me by death, and it was pain and anguish unspeakable—but I have known a suffering compared to which that agony was joy. There can be worse things to bear than the death of your heart’s dearest treasure—at least I know it may be so with women. And it was because you were a woman, with a woman’s possibilities of pain, that I wanted to come to you—to tell you all, and let you say whether I am a fit wife for your son.”
Ah, poor Christine! She felt, as she spoke those words, the silent, still, impalpable recoil in her companion’s heart. She knew the poor woman was trying to be kind and merciful and sympathetic, but she also knew that what she had just said had rendered Noel’s mother the foe and opposer of this marriage, instead of its friend.
“Go on, tell me all,” his mother said, and that subtle change of voice and manner was distincter still to the acute consciousness of Christine’s suffering soul. “I will be your friend whatever happens, and I honor you for the spirit in which you look upon this thing. I will speak out boldly, though you know I dislike to give you pain. But tell me this: Do you think yourself a fit wife for my son?”