“Oh, I know,” burst out Mrs. North again; “I know. My God! and this is a Christian country—yes, wait,” she said, for she fancied Florence was going. “I know you are kind and gentle, and you are—good,” she added, almost as an afterthought; “and you and the women like you try very hard to keep your goodness close among yourselves, and never to let one scrap of it touch women like me. Tell me,” she asked—“did you marry the man you loved best in the world?” “Yes,” Florence answered unwillingly, afraid of being dragged into an argument. “Then you have never known any temptation to do wrong. Where does the merit of doing right come in?” “I would rather not discuss it,” Florence said, gently but coldly. “Oh, let me speak—not for my own sake, for I shall be strong enough to make some sort of life for myself after a time; but for the sake of other women who may be in my position and judged as you judge me. When I was eighteen I was persuaded to marry a man old enough to be my father.” “But if you didn’t care for him——” “So many of us think that love is half a myth till our own turn comes. They said I should be happy, and I wanted to be. Of course I wasn’t: human nature is not so easily satisfied. He was rather kind at first. But after a time he grew tired of me. I suppose I wasn’t much of a companion to him. He went abroad and left me alone, again and again. At first my sister was with me; she married and went away. Mrs. Baines came a little while before that——” She stopped, as if unable to go on without some encouragement. “Yes?” Florence said, listening almost against her will. “And I was young and inexperienced. How could I know the danger in so many things that amused me? At last I fell in love; I had been so lonely, I was so tired, and I had never cared for any one in my whole life before.” “But you knew that it was wrong. You were married.” “Oh yes, but the paths of virtue had been deadly dull, and trodden with a man I did not love and whom I had been made to marry. The man I did love was young and handsome,—he is a soldier. The rest of the story was natural, even if it was wicked.” “And then?” asked Florence, wonderingly. “Then my husband came back, and there were the usual details. He heard something that sent him flying home to look after his honour. He had forgotten to look after mine—or my happiness.” “And the man?” “He had gone to India with his regiment. He telegraphed over, ‘No defence,’ and that was the end of it.” “I hope he will come back and make you reparation.” “He has not written me a line,” Mrs. North said, and the tears came into her eyes for a moment—“not a word, not a sign. Perhaps he is dead—India is a country that swallows up many histories; or, perhaps,” she added desperately, “he, too, despises me now. People flee from me as if I had the plague,” she added, with the bitter laugh again. “Oh, there are no people in the world who encourage wickedness as do the strictly virtuous.”