As for Marian herself, she had a good cry, as soon as Lady Modyford was gone, over this interview also. Kind as the governor’s wife had wished to show herself, and genuinely sympathetic as she had actually been, Marian couldn’t help recognising that there was a certain profound undercurrent of degradation in having to accept the ready sympathy of such a woman at all on such a matter. Anywhere else, Marian would have felt that Lady Modyford, motherly as she was, stood just a grade or two by nature below her; in fact, she felt so there too; but still, she was compelled by circumstances to take the good fat body’s consolation and condolence as a sort of favour; while anywhere else she would rather have repelled it as a disagreeable impertinence, or at least as a distasteful interference with her own individuality. It was impossible not to be dimly conscious that coming to Trinidad had made a real difference in her own social position. At home, she had no need for anybody’s condescension or anybody’s affability; here, she was forced to recognise the fact that even Lady Modyford was making generous concessions on purpose in her favour. It was galling, but it was inevitable. There is nothing more painful to persons who have always mixed in society on terms of perfect and undoubted equality, than thus to put themselves into false positions, where it is possible for equals, or even for natural inferiors, to seem to patronise them. Nevertheless, that evening, Marian said to Edward very firmly: ‘Edward, you must make up your mind to stop in Trinidad. I shall never feel so much confidence again in your real courage if you turn and run from Nora’s father. Besides, now Lady Modyford has called, and Nora has been here, I daresay we shall get a little society of our own—people who know too much about the outer world to be wholly governed by the fads and fancies of Trinidad planters.’ And Edward answered in a somewhat faltering voice: ‘Very well, my darling. One’s duty lies that way, I know; and if you’re strong enough to stand up and face it, why, I must try to face it also.’