She believed in, and yet doubted, the strength in the better part of Eliza's heart; believed, but spoke hurriedly, because she felt that a chilly doubt was coming over her as to whether, after all, there was any comprehension, any answering thrill, for the words she said.
Her own stately beauty was at its height, at its loveliest hour, when she spoke. She had been, in girlhood, what is called a beauty; she had dazzled men's eyes and turned their heads; and when the first bloom was past, she had gone out of the glare, having neither satisfied the world nor been satisfied with it, because of the higher craving that is worldly disability. She had turned into the common paths of life and looked upon her beauty and her triumph as past. And yet, ten years after the triumphs of her girlhood, this day, this hour, found her more beautiful than she had ever been before. The stimulus of a new and more perfect climate, the daily labour for which others pitied her, had done their part. The angels who watch over prayer and effort and failure; and failure and effort and prayer, had laid their hands upon her brow, bestowing graces. As she sat now, speaking out of a full heart, there came a colour and light that gave an ethereal charm to her handsome face. There was no one there to see it; Eliza Cameron was not susceptible to beauty. God, who created beauty in flowers and women, and knew to the full the uses thereof, did not set flowers in gardeners' shows nor women in ball-rooms.
Sophia had spoken strongly, vividly, of the vanity of what men call success, and the emptiness of what they call wealth, but Eliza, self-centred, did not enter into this wide theme.
"You despise me," she repeated sullenly, "because of what I have done."
"What makes you think I despise you?"
She did not intend to draw a confession on the false supposition that Bates had already told all the story, but this was the result. Eliza, with arms folded defiantly, stated such details of her conduct as she supposed, would render her repulsive, stated them badly, and evoked that feeling of repulsion that she was defying.
Sophia was too much roused to need time for thought. "I cannot condemn you, for I have done as bad a thing as you have done, and for the same reason," she cried.
Eliza looked at her, and faltered in her self-righteousness. "I don't believe it," she said rudely. She fell back a pace or two, and took to sorting the piles of white coverlets mechanically.
"You did what you did because of everything in the world that you wanted that you thought you could get that way; and, for the same reason, I once agreed to marry a man I didn't like. If you come to think of it, that was as horrid and unnatural; it is a worse thing to desecrate the life of a living man than the death of a dead one. I stand condemned as much as you, Eliza; but don't you go on now to add to one unnatural deed another as bad."
"Why did you do it?" asked Eliza, drawn, wondering, from the thought of herself.