Alas, alas! my friend, I own that I had been wanting in that—I admitted my error, and deplored it.
She spoke of the family reputation being sullied by the union of my name with that of Clarence Fairfax and the miserable Mrs Rashleigh.
I could not see it in the light she did, but I wept sorely when she alluded to the mortification it had caused her and my father; she emphasised the last two words of this sentence.
She dwelt on a difference of opinion now existing between her and my father—“it might estrange them seriously.”
I trembled, and began to waver in my resolution.
She said that the esclandre had been injurious to my sister’s prospects in life.
I feared that I had been more to blame than I had believed.
I said “the world was very hard.”
“Very,” replied my mother—“so hard, that your imprudence has been visited on all of us. I have been blamed for launching you into the gaieties of life at Cape Town, with all its incidental temptations. Marion is pointed out as the sister of ‘that flirt, Miss Daveney, Mrs Rashleigh’s rival;’ and your father reproaches himself for not remaining with you when he discovered that Lady Amabel Fairfax had lost rather than gained in strength of character—”
I could have said, “Ah! mother, how do you learn what the world says of us?—who dares tell you these things?” I was not aware then that Lyle, in his own specious, deprecatory way, was her informant, directly or indirectly—“grieving to set such unpleasant truths before her, but deeming it his duty to do so.”