Book 7 - Chapter 2

St. Ogg's Passes Judgment

It was soon known throughout St. Ogg's that Miss Tulliver was come
back; she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr. Stephen
Guest,--at all events, Mr. Stephen Guest had not married her; which
came to the same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We
judge others according to results; how else?--not knowing the process
by which results are arrived at. If Miss Tulliver, after a few months
of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs. Stephen Guest, with a
post-marital _trousseau_, and all the advantages possessed even by the
most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St.
Ogg's, as else where, always knew what to think, would have judged in
strict consistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases,
is always of the feminine gender,--not the world, but the world's
wife; and she would have seen that two handsome young people--the
gentleman of quite the first family in St. Ogg's--having found
themselves in a false position, had been led into a course which, to
say the least of it, was highly injudicious, and productive of sad
pain and disappointment, especially to that sweet young thing, Miss
Deane. Mr. Stephen Guest had certainly not behaved well; but then,
young men were liable to those sudden infatuated attachments; and bad
as it might seem in Mrs. Stephen Guest to admit the faintest advances
from her cousin's lover (indeed it _had_ been said that she was
actually engaged to young Wakem,--old Wakem himself had mentioned it),
still, she was very young,--"and a deformed young man, you know!--and
young Guest so very fascinating; and, they say, he positively worships
her (to be sure, that can't last!), and he ran away with her in the
boat quite against her will, and what could she do? She couldn't come
back then; no one would have spoken to her; and how very well that
maize-colored satinette becomes her complexion! It seems as if the
folds in front were quite come in; several of her dresses are made
so,--they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for her. Poor Miss
Deane! She is very pitiable; but then there was no positive
engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. After all, if
young Guest felt no more for her than _that_ it was better for her not
to marry him. What a wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss
Tulliver,--quite romantic? Why, young Guest will put up for the
borough at the next election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That
young Wakem nearly went out of his mind; he always _was_ rather queer;
but he's gone abroad again to be out of the way,--quite the best thing
for a deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr.
and Mrs. Stephen Guest,--such nonsense! pretending to be better than