“Accordingly she does even as she had said,” continued Lady Engleton. “She will not brook that interference with her liberty which marriage among us old-fashioned people generally implies. She refuses to submit to the attempt that is of course made (in spite of a pre-nuptial understanding) to bring her under the yoke, and so off she goes and lives independently, leaving husband and relatives lamenting.”
The vicar’s wife said she thought she must be going home. Her husband would be expecting her.
“Oh, won’t you wait a little, Mrs. Walker? Your daughters would perhaps like a game of tennis with my brothers presently.”
Mrs. Walker yielded uneasily.
“But before Caterina takes the law into her own hands, in this way,” Lady Engleton continued, “she is troubled with doubts. She sometimes wonders whether she ought not, after all, to respect the popular standards (notwithstanding the compact), instead of disturbing everybody by clinging to her own. Now was it strength of character or obstinate egotism that induced her to stick to her original colours, come what might? That is the question which the book has stated but left unanswered.”
Miss Du Prel said that the book showed, if it showed anything, that one must be true to one’s own standard, and not attempt to respect an ideal in practice that one despises in theory. We are bound, she asserted, to produce that which is most individual within us; to be ourselves, and not a poor imitation of someone else; to dare even apparent wrong-doing, rather than submit to live a life of devotion to that which we cannot believe.
Mrs. Walker suggested to her daughters that they might go and have a look at the rose-garden, but the daughters preferred to listen to the conversation.
“In real life,” said the practical Algitha, “Caterina would not have been able to follow her idea so simply. Supposing she had had children and complicated circumstances, what could she have done?”
Miss Du Prel thought that a compromise might have been made.
“A compromise by which she could act according to two opposite standards?”