Was it, or was it not, the fact, she asked herself, that now, after all these years, she thought of this woman as worse than her husband, the iniquity of the accomplice as more diabolical than that of the principal? She found she could not answer this in the negative off-hand. The paradox was also before her that that incorrigible amphibious treasure of hers, whose voice was even now shouting to her more timorous friend from beyond the selvage-wave she had just contemptuously dived through—that that Sally, inexchangeable for anything she could conceive or imagine, must needs have been something quite other than she was, had she come of any other technical paternity than the accursed one she had to own to. Was there some terrible law in Nature that slow forgiveness of the greatest wrong that can be wrought must perforce be granted to its inflictor, through the gracious survivor of a brutal indifference that would almost add to his crime, if that were possible? If, so, surely the Universe must be the work of an Almighty Fiend, a Demiurgus with a cruel heart, and this the masterstroke of all his cunning. But what, in Heaven's name, was the use of bruising her brains against the conundrums of the great unanswered metaphysical sphinx? Better be contented with the easy vernacular solution of the rhymester:
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Evils from circumstances grow."
Because she felt she was getting no nearer the solution of her own problem, and was, if anything, wandering from the point.
Another way of looking at the matter was beginning to take form: had hung about her mind and forsaken it more than once. Might it not be better, after all, to dash at the position and capture it while her forces were well under control? To pursue the
metaphor, the commissariat might not hold out. Better endure the ills we have—of course, Rosalind knew all that—than fly to others that we know not of. But suppose we have a chance of flying to others we can measure the length and breadth of, and staving off thereby an uncalculable unknown? She felt she almost knew the worst that could come of taking Gerry into her confidence, telling him boldly all about himself, provided she could choose her opportunity and make sure Sally was well out of the way. The concealment from Sally was the achievement whose failure involved the greatest risk. Her husband's mind would bear the knowledge of his story well or ill according to the way in which it reached him; but the necessity of keeping her girl in ignorance of it was a thing absolute. Any idea that Sally's origin could be concealed from her, and her stepfather's identity made known, Rosalind dismissed as simply fantastic.
A lady who had established herself below high-water mark with many more books than she could read, and plant capable of turning out much more work than she could do, at this point fled for safety from a rush of white foam. It went back for more, meaning to wet her through next time; but had to bear its disappointment. Mrs. Arkwright—for it was Gwendolen's mamma—being driven from the shadow of the breakwater, cast about her for a new lodgment, and perceived one beside Mrs. Fenwick, whom she thought very well for the seaside, but not to leave cards on. Might she come up there, beside you? Rosalind didn't want her, but had to pretend she did, to encourage her advent. It left behind it a track of skeins and volumes, which had trickled from the fugitive, but were recovered by a domestic, and pronounced dry. Besides, they were only library books, and didn't matter.
"I haven't seen you since the other day on the pier, Mrs. Fenwick, or I wanted to have asked you more about that charming young couple, the Julian Attwoods. Oh dear! I knew I should get the name wrong.... Bradshaw! Yes, of course." Her vivid perception of what the name really is, when apprised of it, almost amounts to a paroxysm. You see, on the pier that day, she made a bad blunder over those Bradshaw people, and though she had consoled her conscience by admitting to her husband
that she had "mis le pied dans le plat," still, she thought, if she was actually going to plump down on Mrs. Fenwick's piece of beach, she ought to do a little more apology. By-the-bye, why is it that ladies of her sort always resort to snippets of French idiom, whenever they get involved in a quagmire of delicacy—or indelicacy, as may be? Will Gwendolen grow like her mother? However, that doesn't concern us now.
A little stiffness on Rosalind's part was really due to her wish to be by herself, but Mrs. Arkwright ascribed it to treasured resentment against her blunders of two days since. Now, she was a person who could never let anything drop—a tugging person. She proceeded to develop the subject.
"Really a most interesting story! I need hardly say that my informants had given me no particulars. Very old friends of my husband's. Quite possible they really knew nothing of this young gentleman's musical gifts. Simply told my husband the tale as I told it to you. Just that the daughter of an old friend of theirs, Professor Sales Wilson—the Professor Sales Wilson—of course, quite a famous name in literature—scholarship—that sort of thing—had run away with a shopman! That was what my husband heard, you know. I merely repeated it."