"Then," said Mrs. Wortle, "he certainly is--no more." There came a certain accession of sadness to her voice, as she reflected that, after all, she was talking to this woman of the death of her undoubted husband.
"Yes; he is dead--at last." Mrs. Wortle uttered a deep sigh. It was dreadful to her to think that a woman should speak in that way of the death of her husband. "I know all that is going on in your mind," said Mrs. Peacocke, looking up into her face.
"Every thought. You are telling yourself how terrible it is that a woman should speak of the death of her husband without a tear in her eye, without a sob,--without one word of sorrow."
"Of course it is sad. Has it not all been sad? But what would you have me do? It is not because he was always bad to me,--because he marred all my early life, making it so foul a blotch that I hardly dare to look back upon it from the quietness and comparative purity of these latter days. It is not because he has so treated me as to make me feel that it has been a misfortune to me to be born, that I now receive these tidings with joy. It is because of him who has always been good to me as the other was bad, who has made me wonder at the noble instincts of a man, as the other has made me shudder at his possible meanness."
"It has been very hard upon you," said Mrs. Wortle.
"And hard upon him, who is dearer to me than my own soul. Think of his conduct to me! How he went away to ascertain the truth when he first heard tidings which made him believe that I was free to become his! How he must have loved me then, when, after all my troubles, he took me to himself at the first moment that was possible! Think, too, what he has done for me since,----and I for him! How I have marred his life, while he has striven to repair mine! Do I not owe him everything?"
"Everything," said Mrs. Wortle,--"except to do what is wrong."
"I did do what was wrong. Would not you have done so under such circumstances? Would not you have obeyed the man who had been to you so true a husband while he believed himself entitled to the name? Wrong! I doubt whether it was wrong. It is hard to know sometimes what is right and what is wrong. What he told me to do, that to me was right. Had he told me to go away and leave him, I should have gone,--and have died. I suppose that would have been right." She paused as though she expected an answer. But the subject was so difficult that Mrs. Wortle was unable to make one. "I have sometimes wished that he had done so. But as I think of it when I am alone, I feel how impossible that would have been to him. He could not have sent me away. That which you call right would have been impossible to him whom I regard as the most perfect of human beings. As far as I know him, he is faultless;--and yet, according to your judgment, he has committed a sin so deep that he must stand disgraced before the eyes of all men."