“I think it is,” said Lady Godolphin in the hard tone she used when her opinion was questioned.
Maria was silent. She never could contend with any one.
“Then you prefer to hold out against the world,” resumed Lady Godolphin; “to put yourself beyond its pale! It is a bold step, Maria.”
“What can I do?” was Maria’s pleading answer. “If the world throws me over because I will not turn against my husband, I cannot help it. I married him for better or for worse, Lady Godolphin.”
“The fact is, Maria,” retorted my lady sharply, “that you have loved George Godolphin in a ridiculous degree.”
“Perhaps I have,” was Maria’s subdued answer, the colour dyeing her face with various reminiscences. “But surely there was no sin in it, Lady Godolphin: he is my husband.”
“And you cling to him still?”
“Oh yes.”
Lady Godolphin rose. She shrugged her shoulders as she drew her white lace shawl over them, she glanced at her coquettish blue bonnet in the glass as she passed it, at her blush-rose cheeks. “You have chosen your husband, Maria, in preference to me; in preference to the world; and from this moment I wash my hands of you, as I have already done of him.”
It was all the farewell she took: and she went out to her carriage, thinking what a blind, obstinate, hardened woman was Maria Godolphin. She saw not what it had cost that “hardened” woman to bear up before her: that her heart was nigh unto breaking; that the sorrow laid upon her was greater than she well knew how to battle with.