She never saw herself in the wrong, and never gave herself the
least trouble to be in the right. She was in good health, ate,
and liked to eat; drank her glass of champagne, and would have
drunk a second, but for her complexion, and that it sometimes
made her feel ill, which was the only thing, after marrying Mr.
Redmain, she ever felt degrading. Of her own worth she had never
had a doubt, and she had none yet: how was she to generate one,
courted wherever she went, both for her own beauty and her
husband's wealth?
To her father she was as stiff and proud as if she had been a
maiden aunt, bent on destroying what expectations from her he
might be cherishing. Who will blame her? He had done her all the
ill he could, and by his own deed she was beyond his reach. Nor
can I see that the debt she owed him for being her father was of
the heaviest.
Her husband was again out of health--certain attacks to which he
was subject were now coming more frequently. I do not imagine his
wife offered many prayers for his restoration. Indeed, she never
prayed for the thing she desired; and, while he and she occupied
separate rooms, the one solitary thing she now regarded as a
privilege, how _could_ she pray for his recovery?
Greatly contrary to Mr. Redmain's unexpressed desire, Miss
Yolland had been installed as Hesper's cousin-companion. After
the marriage, she ventured to unfold a little, as she had
promised, but what there was yet of womanhood in Hesper had
shrunk from further acquaintance with the dimly shadowed
mysteries of Sepia's story; and Sepia, than whom none more
sensitive to change of atmosphere, had instantly closed again;
and now not unfrequently looked and spoke like one feeling her
way.
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