“Robert,” said Mrs. Gilbert, sternly, “do you think it would be right for a woman to be happy after she had made others so wretched?”
“Well, not at once. But I don’t see how her remaining unhappy is to help matters. You say that you really think she does like him, after all?”
“She would hardly talk of anything else—where he was, and what he saw, and what he said. Yes, I should say she does like him.”
“Then I don’t see why he shouldn’t come back from Europe and marry her, when she makes her final failure on the stage. I would, in his place.”
“My dear, you know you wouldn’t!”
“Well, then, he would in my place. Have it your own way, my love.”
Mr. Gilbert seemed to think he had made a joke, but his wife did not share his laugh.
“Robert,” she said, after a thoughtful pause, “the lenient way in which you look at her is worse than wrong; it’s weak.”
“Very likely, my dear; but I can’t help feeling it’s a noble weakness. Why, of course I know that she spread a ruin round, for a while, but, as you say, it seems to have been more of a ruin than she meant; and there’s every probability that she’s been sorry enough for it since.”
“Oh! And so you think such a person as that can change by trying—and atone for what she’s done by being sorry for it!” said Mrs. Gilbert, with scorn.