feelings; he could not believe that it would make a terrible difference in her happiness to go about the world as the wife, the cynical, consenting wife of the author of a blow dealt with that brutality at a breast to which she owed filial honour. She did not say to him that she should never hold her head up before Macarthy again (her strength had been that hitherto, as against Macarthy, she was perfectly straight), but it was in a great degree the prefigurement of her brother's cold, lifelong scorn that had kindled in her, while she awaited her husband's return, the passion with which she now protested. He would never read The Modern Warning but he would hear all about it; he would meet it in the newspapers, in every one's talk; the very voices of the air would distil the worst pages into his ear and make the scandal of her participation even greater than—as heaven knew—it would deserve to be. She thought of the month of renewed association, of happy, pure impressions that she had spent a year before in the midst of American kindness, in the midst of memories more innocent than her visions of to-day; and the effect of this retrospect was galling in the face of her possible shame. Shame—shame: she repeated that word to Sir Rufus in a tone which made him stare, as if it dawned upon him that her reason was perhaps deserting her. That shame should attach itself to his wife in consequence of any behaviour of his was an idea that he had to make a very considerable effort to embrace; and while his candour betrayed it his wife was touched even through her resentment by seeing that she had not made him angry. He thought she was strangely unreasonable, but he was determined not to fall into that vice on his own side.
