Hence she had not merely got used to the horror, but in a measure
satisfied with it; never suspecting, because never caring enough,
that she had at the same time, and that not very gradually, been
assimilating to the horror; had lost much of what purity she had
once had, and become herself unclean, body and mind, in the
contact with uncleanness. One thing she did know, and that
swallowed up all the rest--that her husband's affairs were so
involved as to threaten absolute poverty; and what woman of the
world would not count damnation better than that?--while Mr.
Redmain was rolling in money. Had she known everything bad of her
daughter's suitor, short of legal crime, for her this would have
covered it all.
In Hesper's useless explosion the mother did not fail to
recognize the presence of Sepia, without whose knowledge of the
bad side of the world, Hesper, she believed, could not have been
awake to so much. But she was afraid of Sepia. Besides, the thing
was so far done; and she did not think she would work to thwart
the marriage. On that point she would speak to her.
But it was a doubtful service that Sepia had rendered her cousin
--to rouse her indignation and not her strength; to wake horror
without hinting at remedy; to give knowledge of impending doom,
without poorest suggestion of hope, or vaguest shadow of possible
escape. It is one thing to see things as they are; to be consumed
with indignation at the wrong; to shiver with aversion to the
abominable; and quite another to rouse the will to confront the
devil, and resist him until he flee.
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