“Why do you compare her with me? It’s different. You know it’s different.”
“Yes, I do know. You were a free, happy girl with your life ahead. Her youth, the best part of her youth has gone, and she has never had the joy that every woman needs. You know what I mean. We need not go into it. Some men mean well, but they have no right to be husbands! The women who have to live with them are slowly starved to death.”
“She has her boy.”
“Yes, she has her boy. For a few weeks in the year.”
“He is her son all the year round.”
“That’s perfectly true, Teresa.”
“A married woman with a son ought not to love another man.”
“That’s perfectly true, Teresa. Do you never by any chance do anything you should not? Can’t you find the least scrap of pity in your heart for other people who are more unhappy than yourself?”
“I am not sorry for people who do wrong. It’s easy to talk, Mrs Beverley. Suppose it was your own husband, and you had seen him, as I did to-day, with another woman—with Cassandra herself. How would you feel?”
Grizel’s grimace was more expressive than words.