She should have
remembered her own resolution, on the morning when Sir Percival
held her to her marriage engagement, and when she resigned the
book of Hartright's drawings into my hands for ever. But, ah me!
where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good
resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back? Where is
the woman who has ever really torn from her heart the image that
has been once fixed in it by a true love? Books tell us that such
unearthly creatures have existed--but what does our own experience
say in answer to books?
I made no attempt to remonstrate with her: perhaps, because I
sincerely appreciated the fearless candour which let me see, what
other women in her position might have had reasons for concealing
even from their dearest friends--perhaps, because I felt, in my
own heart and conscience, that in her place I should have asked
the same questions and had the same thoughts. All I could
honestly do was to reply that I had not written to him or heard
from him lately, and then to turn the conversation to less
dangerous topics.
There has been much to sadden me in our interview--my first
confidential interview with her since her return. The change
which her marriage has produced in our relations towards each
other, by placing a forbidden subject between us, for the first
time in our lives; the melancholy conviction of the dearth of all
warmth of feeling, of all close sympathy, between her husband and
herself, which her own unwilling words now force on my mind; the
distressing discovery that the influence of that ill-fated
attachment still remains (no matter how innocently, how
harmlessly) rooted as deeply as ever in her heart--all these are
disclosures to sadden any woman who loves her as dearly, and feels
for her as acutely, as I do.
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