Chapter 10 - Page 2

have passed since I last saw my boy-husband. We were mere children; see how I have altered since in mind, substance, and outline--I have even grown half an inch taller since his death. Two years will exhaust the regrets of widows who have long been faithful wives; and ought I not to show a little new life when my husband died in the honeymoon?'

'No. Accepting the protection of your husband's mother was, in effect, an avowal that you rejected the idea of being a widow to prolong the idea of being a wife; and the sin against your conventional state thus assumed is almost as bad as would have been a sin against the married state itself. If you had gone off when he died, saying, "Thank heaven, I am free!" you would, at any rate, have shown some real honesty.'

'I should have been more virtuous by being more unfeeling. That often happens.'

'I have taken to you, and made a great deal of you--given you the inestimable advantages of foreign travel and good society to enlarge your mind. In short, I have been like a Naomi to you in everything, and I maintain that writing these poems saps the foundation of it all.'

'I do own that you have been a very good Naomi to me thus far; but Ruth was quite a fast widow in comparison with me, and yet Naomi never blamed her. You are unfortunate in your illustration. But it is dreadfully flippant of me to answer you like this, for you have been kind. But why will you provoke me!'

'Yes, you are flippant, Ethelberta. You are too much given to that sort of thing.'

'Well, I don't know how the secret of my name has leaked out; and I am not ribald, or anything you say,' said Ethelberta, with a sigh.

'Then you own you do not feel so ardent as you seem in your book?'

'I do own it.'

'And that you are sorry your name has been published in connection with it?'

'I am.'

'And you think the verses may tend to misrepresent your character as a gay and rapturous one, when it is not?'

'I do fear it.'

'Then, of course, you will suppress the poems instantly. That is the only way in which you can regain the position you have hitherto held with me.'

Ethelberta said nothing; and the dull winter atmosphere had far from light enough in it to show by her face what she might be thinking.

'Well?' said Lady Petherwin.

'I did not expect such a command as that,' said Ethelberta. 'I have been obedient for four years, and would continue so--but I cannot suppress the poems. They are not mine now to suppress.'

'You must get them into your hands. Money will do it, I suppose?'

'Yes, I suppose it would--a thousand pounds.'

'Very well; the money shall be forthcoming,' said Lady Petherwin, after a pause. 'You had better sit down and write about it at once.'

'I cannot do it,' said Ethelberta; 'and I will not. I don't wish them to be suppressed. I