Some will, perhaps, think it an unnatural thing that Mary should have
regarded her pledge to the Doctor as of so absolute and binding force;
but they must remember the rigidity of her education. Self-denial and
self-sacrifice had been the daily bread of her life. Every prayer,
hymn, and sermon, from her childhood, had warned her to distrust her
inclinations and regard her feelings as traitors. In particular had she
been brought up to regard the sacredness of a promise with a
superstitious tenacity; and in this case the promise involved so deeply
the happiness of a friend whom she had loved and revered all her life,
that she never thought of any way of escape from it. She had been
taught that there was no feeling so strong but that it might be
immediately repressed at the call of duty; and if the thought arose to
her of this great love to another, she immediately answered it by
saying, "How would it have been, if I had been married? As I could have
overcome then, so I can now."
Mrs. Scudder came into her room with a candle in her hand, and Mary,
accustomed to read the expression of her mother's countenance, saw at a
glance a visible discomposure there.
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