"_
Therefore, on being told to sit down, they gravely took their places on
the sofa, and continued to stare.
The father and bridegroom looked on, silent as they. What could he
say or do? It was the natural and necessary opening up of that vexed
question--second marriages, concerning which moralists,
sentimentalists, and practical people argue forever, and never come to
any conclusion. Of course not, because each separate case should
decide itself. The only universal rule or law, if there be one, is that
which applies equally to the love before marriage; that as to a complete,
mutual first love, any after love is neither likely, necessary, nor
desirable; so, to anyone who has known a perfect first marriage--the
whole satisfaction of every requirement of heart and soul and human
affection--unto such, a second marriage, like a second love, would be
neither right nor wrong, advisable nor unadvisable, but simply
impossible.
What could he do--the father who had just given his children a new
mother, they being old enough not only to understand this, but
previously taught; as most people are so fatally ready to teach children,
the usual doctrine about step-mothers, and also quite ready to rebel
against the same?
The step-mother likewise, what could she do, even had she recognized
and felt all that the children's behavior implied?
Alas! (I say "alas!" for this was as sad a thing as the other) she did not
recognize it.
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