But surely he would let her sorrow
awhile!--would sorrow with her. Under the strange coldness and brevity
of his letter, she felt like the children in the market-place of
old--"We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept."
Yet if her story was not to be a source of sorrow--of divine pity--it
could only be a source of disgrace and shame. Tears might wash it out!
But to hate and resent it--so it seemed to her--must be--in a world,
where every detail of such a thing was or would be known--to go through
life branded and crushed by it. If the man who was to be her husband
could only face it thus (by a stern ostracism of the dead, by silencing
all mention of them between himself and her), her cheeks could never
cease to burn, her heart to shrink.
Now at last she felt herself weighed indeed to the earth, because
Marsham, in that measured letter, had made her realize the load on him.
All that huge wealth he was to give up for her? His mother had actually
the power to strip him of his inheritance?--and would certainly exercise
it to punish him for marrying her--Diana?
Humiliation came upon her like a flood, and a bitter insight followed.
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