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On the whole, she felt
satisfied that no mischief had been done.
We hope our readers will do Mrs. Scudder justice. It is true that she
yet wore on her third finger the marriage-ring of a sailor lover, and
his memory was yet fresh in her heart; but even mothers who have
married for love themselves somehow so blend a daughter's existence
with their own as to conceive that she must marry their love, and not
her own. Besides this, Mrs. Scudder was an Old Testament woman, brought
up with that scrupulous exactitude of fidelity in relation to promises
which would naturally come from familiarity with a book in which
covenant-keeping is represented as one of the highest attributes of
Deity, and covenant-breaking as one of the vilest sins of humanity. To
break the word that had gone forth out of one's mouth was to lose
self-respect, and all claim to the respect of others, and to sin
against eternal rectitude.
As we have said before, it is almost impossible to make our
light-minded times comprehend the earnestness with which those people
lived.


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