Some, doubtless, of the innocents thus immolated
pass even through hideous fires of marital foulness to come out
the purer and the sweeter; but whither must the stone about the
neck of those that cause the little ones to offend sink those
mothers? What company shall in the end be too low, too foul for
them? Like to like it must always be.
Hesper was not so ignorant as some girls; she had for some time
had one at her side capable of casting not a little light of the
kind that is darkness.
"_Duty_, mamma!" she cried, her eyes flaming, and her cheek
flushed with the shame of the thing that was but as yet the
merest object in her thought; "can a woman be born for such
things? How _could_ I--mamma, how could any woman, with an
atom of self-respect, consent to occupy the same--_room_
with Mr. Redmain?"
"Hesper! I am shocked. _Where_ did you learn to speak, not
to say _think_, of such things? Have I taken such pains--
good God! you strike me dumb! Have I watched my child like a
very--angel, as anxious to keep her mind pure as her body fair,
and is _this_ the result?" Upon what Lady Margaret founded
her claim to a result more satisfactory to her maternal designs,
it were hard to say. For one thing, she had known nothing of what
went on in her nursery, positively nothing of the real character
of the women to whom she gave the charge of it; and--although, I
dare say, for worldly women, Hesper's schoolmistresses were quite
respectable--what did her mother, what could she know of the
governesses or of the flock of sheep--all presumably, but how
certainly _all_ white?--into which she had sent her?
"Is _this_ the result?" said Lady Margaret.
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