“In such a case as Miss Du Prel depicts? I doubt it. Caterina, in real life, would have a lively story to tell. How selfish we should think her! How we should point to the festoons of bleeding hearts that she had wounded—a dripping cordon round the deserted home! No; I believe Miss Du Prel herself would be horrified at her own Caterina if she came upon her unexpectedly in somebody’s drawing-room.”
There was a laugh.
“Of course, a great deal is to be said for the popular way of looking at the matter,” Lady Engleton observed. “This fascinating heroine must have caused a great deal of real sorrow, or at least she would have caused it, were it not that her creator had considerably removed all relatives, except a devoted couple of unorthodox parents, who are charmed at her decision to scandalize society, and wonder why she doesn’t do it sooner. Parents like that don’t grow on every bush.”
Mrs. Walker glanced nervously at her astonished girls.
Lady Engleton pointed out that had Caterina been situated in a more ordinary manner, she would have certainly broken her parents’ hearts and embittered their last years, to say nothing of the husband and perhaps the children, who would have suffered for want of a mother’s care.
“But why should the husband suffer?” asked Algitha. “Caterina’s husband cordially detested her.”
“It is customary to regard the occasion as one proper for suffering,” said Mrs. Temperley, “and every well-regulated husband would suffer accordingly.”
“Clearly,” assented Lady Engleton. “When the world congratulates us we rejoice, when it condoles with us we weep.”
“That at least, would not affect the children,” said Algitha. “I don’t see why of necessity they should suffer.”
“Their share of the woe would be least of all, I think,” Mrs. Temperley observed. “What ogre is going to ill-treat them? And since few of us know how to bring up so much as an earth-worm reasonably, I can’t see that it matters so very much which particular woman looks after the children. Any average fool would do.”