The loan of her lips had been for use only,
and not for any pleasure which she had even in pleasing him. In her
very swoon she had felt the need of being careful at all points. It
was all labour, and all care,--and, alas, alas, all disappointment!
But there was a future through which she must live. How might she
best avoid the misfortune of poverty for the twenty, thirty, or
forty years which might be accorded to her? What did it matter whom
or what she hated? The housemaid probably did not like cleaning
grates; nor the butcher killing sheep; nor the sempstress stitching
silks. She must live. And if she could only get away from her
mother that in itself would be something. Most people were
distasteful to her, but no one so much as her mother. Here in
England she knew that she was despised among the people with whom
she lived. And now she would be more despised than ever. Her uncle
and aunt, though she disliked them, had been much to her. It was
something,--that annual visit to Mistletoe, though she never
enjoyed it when she was there. But she could well understand that
after such a failure as this, after such a game, played before
their own eyes in their own house, her uncle and her aunt would
drop her altogether. She had played this game so boldly that there
was no retreat. Would it not therefore be better that she should
fly altogether?
There were a time on that morning in which she had made up her mind
that she would write a most affectionate letter to Morton, telling
him that her people had now agreed to his propositions as to
settlement, and assuring him that from henceforward she would be
all his own.
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