“It’s all very well for you to talk like this now—when everything’s new. Even I know what the first months of marriage can be like.... But later on, when things have sobered down, you’ll feel different—you’ll want to see some of your old friends again, and wish you hadn’t shut them out.”
“If you mean the Parishes and the Hursts and the Wades and all that lot, nothing I could ever do would make them my friends again. You see, they’re friends of Father’s, and, considering his attitude towards my marriage—which would be the same whatever I did to ‘raise’ myself—they can never be friends of mine. It isn’t as if I’d moved thirty miles off and had a new sort of ‘county’ to visit me. I’m in the middle of the old crowd, and they can never be friendly with me without offending my people. No, I must be content with Ben’s friends—if I tried to ‘improve’ him we’d lose those, too, and then I’d have nobody.”
“I daresay you’re right, my dear—you sound practical, anyway. And I’ve no right to teach anyone how to arrange their lives.... It’s queer, isn’t it, Jen? I took, generally speaking, no risks when I married. I married a man I loved, a man of my own class, whom my people approved of—and look at me now. You, on the other hand, have taken every imaginable risk—a runaway match, a different class, and the family curse....”
“You’ll have to look at me twelve years hence to compare me with you.”
“I think you’re going to be all right, though—even if you don’t take my advice.”
“I’m sure I shall be all right. You see, I’m doing everything with my eyes open. You didn’t have your eyes open, Mary.”
“I know I didn’t. Very few women do. Most brides are like newborn kittens with their eyes shut.”
“Are you happy now?”
It was the first time she had dared ask the question. Mary hesitated—
“Yes, I suppose I am happy. I have enough to live on, I have my friends—I travel about, and see places and people.”