“Why should I tell you any falsehood about the matter?” Phemie said, one day; “it is all dead and gone—the love, the shame, the struggle, the remorse. I did love Basil Stondon, but I love him no longer; the moment I saw his wife I was cured, and being cured, I wonder how any man can love another man’s wife. I could not love another woman’s husband. I could not,” she repeated, seeing a look of incredulity in Miss Derno’s face.
“And yet you say you have done with life?”
“What has that to do with the matter?”
“Much. No person has done with life till he has met with some fatal disappointment in it. If you shut yourself up here, seeing no one, visiting no one, receiving no one, not even your intimate acquaintances—both Basil and his wife will be apt to think you are a disappointed woman, and after a while the world may think so too.”
“What would you have me do?” Phemie inquired.
“I would have you act as if your life were before, not behind you; as though there were still some happiness left in existence, even though Basil be married, and Georgina mistress of Marshlands. I would not have you leave the world and take a kind of social veil, burying yourself among these cousins of yours, and forgetting that a woman of property has scarcely a right to reside in such strict privacy as you propose. When your time of mourning is over, go out, see people, visit, take an interest in what is going on around you, and you will find as the years pass that happiness comes with occupation, and that the worst remedy in the world for a wound is always to be keeping your hands upon it and pulling the sore open.”
“I have occupied myself,” Phemie answered. “I have planned schools. I have visited the poor. I have relieved the sick. I have devoted myself to my family.”
“My dear Mrs. Stondon, you must do more. You must amuse yourself. You must devote yourself to the good work of getting strong, mentally and bodily; of taking joy out of the days as they come and go; of being interested—really interested—in your fellows. Do it at first from pride. Put it out of anyone’s power to say Mrs. Stondon is a broken-hearted and a disappointed woman.”
“That can never be said with any truth of me,” answered Phemie, “for I am not disappointed, and I am not broken-hearted; and if Basil had never seen Georgina Hurlford, it would not have made any difference between us. After that—after that letter, I would never marry any one—I never would.” And Phemie covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud.
“What letter are you talking about?” asked Miss Derno.