"So then," said she, as if to be gay at the expense of her husband's
long absence, "now that three years and more have brought him so near
us, maybe another three years or so will bring him back to us!" 'Twas
affected gaiety, one could easily see. Her real feeling must have been
of annoyance that any news of her husband should be obtruded upon her.
She had entered into a way of life that involved forgetfulness of him,
and for which she must reproach herself whenever she thought of him,
but which was too pleasant for her to abandon. But she had the virtue
to be ashamed that reminders of his existence were unwelcome, and
consequently to pretend that she took them amiably; and yet she had
not the hypocrisy to pretend the eager solicitude which a devoted wife
would evince upon receiving news of her long-absent soldier-husband.
Such hypocrisy, indeed, would have appeared ridiculous in a wife who
had scarce mentioned her husband's name, and then only when others
spoke of him, in three years. Yet her very self-reproach for
disregarding him--did it not show that, under all the feelings that
held her to a life of gay coquetry, lay her love for Philip, not dead,
nor always sleeping?
When Cornelius came to the house to live, she met him with a warm
clasp of the hand, and with a smile of so much radiance and sweetness,
that for a time he must have been proud of her on Phil's behalf; and
so dazzled that he could not yet see those things for which, on the
same behalf, he must needs be sorrowful.
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