_You have stores of patience, only now and then fits of desperation_ DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS
FRANCIS received Mrs. Lawrie's incoherent offensive letter, gulped down its unpalatable statement of fact, burned it, and rushed to his greenhouse to think it over and to master the anger that was rising in him. . . . He blamed himself for not having seen what was in the air and tried to remember incidents and conversations which should have given him the hint. He recollected several, quite enough to set him scourging himself for his blind neglect, until he began to ask himself what he could have done supposing he had seen and realised. Quite clearly he could not have forbidden Bennett the house. Interference was always dangerous where the emotions were concerned.
Most painful of all was the thought that Annette should not have had trust enough in him to seek his advice and comfort if she were in trouble. She must have suffered, he told himself, to make such a plunge into poverty and the responsibility of marriage. It must have been a tremendous flood of feeling that had swept her into it. . . . It was so pitiful: a mere child: children both of them.
In a second he found himself thinking the worst of it--a scrambled marriage of necessity. He put that from him. Of course not. Annette had been well and happy--except for her illness--extraordinarily happy, and so gentle and sympathetic and thoughtful, so blithe and busy. No wickedness there, no hypocritical covering up of dark gnawing secrets. Only the most absurd, pitiful romantic folly, reckless defiance of all the laws of prudence.