The diabolical wretch who had just left her took care to perform her
base and heartless task with double effect. It was not merely the
information she had communicated concerning Woodward that affected her
so deeply, although she felt, as it were, in the Inmost recesses of her
soul, that it was true, but that which went at the moment with greater
agony to her heart was the allusion to Charles Lindsay, and the
corroboration it afforded to the truth of the charge which Woodward had
brought, with so much apparent reluctance, against him--the charge of
having neglected and abandoned her for another, and that other a person
of low birth, who, by relinquishing her virtue, had contrived to gain
such an artful and selfish ascendancy over him. How could she doubt
it? Here was a woman ignorant of the communication Woodward had made to
her,--ignorant of the vows that had passed between them,--who had heard
of his falsehood and profligacy, and who never would have alluded to
them had she not been questioned. So far, then, Woodward, she felt,
stood without blame with respect to his brother.
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