They might
meet on the roads, and there would be a cold question or two as to
each other's welfare, and a vain shaking of hands,--but they would
know nothing and care for nothing as to each other's thoughts. And
there would come some stately dame who hearing how things had been
many years ago, would perhaps--. But no;--the stately dame should
be received with courtesy, but there should be no patronising. Even
in these few minutes up-stairs she thought much of the stately dame
and was quite sure that she would endure no patronage from Bragton.
She almost thought that she could do it. There were hideous ideas
afflicting her soul dreadfully, but which she strove to banish. Of
course she could not love him,--not at first. But all those who
wished her to marry him, including himself, knew that;--and still
they wished her to marry him. How could that be disgraceful which
all her friends desired? Her father, to whom she was, as she knew
well, the very apple of his eye, wished her to marry this man;--and
yet her father knew that her heart was elsewhere. Had not women
done it by hundreds, by thousands, and had afterwards performed
their duties well as mothers and wives. In other countries, as she
had read, girls took the husbands found for them by their parents
as a matter of course. As she left the room, and slowly crept
down-stairs, she almost thought she would do it.
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