I meant what I had said. I meant to do what I had promised. God knows I did. But does a woman ever know her own heart? Or is heaven alone the judge of it?
At four o'clock that afternoon my husband left Ellan for England. I went with him.
FORTIETH CHAPTER
Having made my bargain I set myself to fulfil the conditions of it. I had faithfully promised to try to love my husband and I prepared to do so.
Did not love require that a wife should look up to and respect and even reverence the man she had married? I made up my mind to do that by shutting my eyes to my husband's obvious faults and seeing only his better qualities.
What disappointments were in store for me! What crushing and humiliating disillusionments!
On the night of our arrival in London we put up at a fashionable hotel in a quiet but well-known part of the West-end, which is inhabited chiefly by consulting physicians and celebrated surgeons. Here, to my surprise, we were immediately discovered, and lines of visitors waited upon my husband the following morning.
I thought they were his friends, and a ridiculous little spurt of pride came to me from heaven knows where with the idea that my husband must be a man of some importance in the metropolis.
But I discovered they were his creditors, money-lenders and bookmakers, to whom he owed debts of "honour" which he had been unable or unwilling to disclose to my father and his advocate.