I went to Boston and came back without seeing anybody but business men. I saw George a moment on my way from the station, and now everything is ready for Mr. Longworthy to-morrow. Both George and I may sleep to-night in peace.
All the way to and from Boston I found myself going over my whole acquaintance with George, questioning myself about what he has been and what he is. To-night I have been reading over what I have written of him in my diary, and the picture I find of him this year has gone to my heart. I am afraid I have not been kind, perhaps have not been just; for if what I have been writing is true George is--he is not a gentleman. It does not startle me now to write this as it would have done two days ago. I am afraid it will be years before I am able to get out of my remembrance how he looked when he confessed. It seems almost as if I should never be able to think of him again except as I saw him then, his face almost as colorless as his pillow, and then red with shame. He looked shrunken, morally as well as physically. I do not know whether I blamed him more or less because he was so eager to throw the whole blame on his wife's extravagance; I only know that it can hardly have been more cruel for him to tell me of his dishonor than it was for me to hear.
If he had asked me I would have lent him money, or given it to him, for that matter, and done it gladly rather than to have him troubled. To think how he must have been teased and bothered for this pitiful sum, just two or three hundred dollars, before he could have made up his mind to borrow it on my securities! He might have got it honestly, it was so little; but he did not wish anybody to know he needed it. Pride, and folly, and vanity,--I am so hurt that I begin to rail. I will put the whole thing out of my mind, and never think of it again if I can help it.
September 15. At last Kathie is gone. What with having dressmakers and seeing to her, and doing the shopping, and corresponding with the principal of the school, and all the rest of it, I have had my hands full for the last three weeks. I have enjoyed it, though; I suppose it is always a pleasure partaking of the moral for a woman when she can conscientiously give her whole mind up to the making of clothes. I do not doubt the delight of sewing fig-leaves together went for the moment far toward comforting Eve for leaving Paradise. I cannot now help smiling to see how entirely Kathie's fine scruples about breaking her vow not to come into the house were forgotten when I had a dressmaker here waiting to fit her frocks.