She perceived that love was a strange, unknown force of which she, happily wooed, happily wedded, and sorrowfully widowed, nevertheless knew nothing. She had loved her husband—indeed she had loved him; he had been uniformly kind and pleasant and indulgent towards her, and she had honestly reciprocated his attachment,—but sometimes, sometimes she had wondered? She had heard, she had read of—more: she had never felt it.
And vague fancies had been put aside as disloyal; reasoned away as disturbing elements of a very real if sober felicity. She was married; and it was wrong and wicked to imagine how things might have been if she had never seen Godfrey, and was going about free and unfettered like other girls?
She did not, of course she did not, wish to be free, and was ashamed to find the thought obtruding itself; but there had been moments—and these recurred to her now.
How strange it must be to feel as—as Sue did, for instance? To start at the sound of a footstep, to thrill at a voice; to be wrapt in a golden haze—oh, she knew all that could be told about that curious, fantastic, elusive mystery, which was yet a sealed book as regarded herself.
And was it not a little hard that it should be so? Had something been missed out of her nature? Was she really formed without warmth, ardour, sensibility? A smile played upon her lips.
Was she then not inviting? Was there nothing desirable, attractive, alluring—nothing to create in another the feeling which might have awakened her own slumbering soul?
It might be so, and yet——
Again her thoughts reverted to Sue; to the staid, gaunt elderly Sue,—and with a new and sharp sensation. Sue had not waited to be sought; Sue could give without asking to receive—she envied Sue from the bottom of her soul.
To her own small public Leo, before her widowhood, had always appeared the gayest of the gay. It was her rôle to be jocund and amusing, and no one took her seriously. But there was another side to her character which she had always been at pains to conceal, partly because it would have met with but scant sympathy from others, partly because she was afraid of it herself,—and of late she had been more and more conscious of the existence of this undercurrent of thought and feeling.
Even had there been no cause for sadness, she would frequently have felt sad. The influences of Nature moved her. Certain sights and sounds oppressed her. From her dreams she often woke in tears.