“My dear girl, with every wish to be indulgent, I can scarcely admit that. To my mind there are no degrees in these things. A woman is faithful or unfaithful. If the letter she receive contains but few lines about an opera-box, they should be lines which she can show her husband without a blush. There must be no lurking treason between the lines. She must not pose herself _en femme incomprise_, and call herself a faithful wife, because her infidelity does not come under the jurisdiction of the Divorce Court. You will say, perhaps, that this comes with a bad grace from me, whose life has been far from spotless. But, you see, spotlessness is not a man’s speciality; and however vile he may be himself, he has a natural belief in the purity of woman. She seems to him a living temple of the virtues, and he scarcely expects to find a pillar-post lurking in the shadow of the sacred portico.” “I was very weak, very wicked,” murmured Emily; “but I have some excuses for my error which other women cannot claim. If I had thought that you loved me,--if I had seen reason for believing that our marriage had brightened your life in the smallest degree, or that my affection, howsoever freely given, could ever have been precious to you, it might have been otherwise with me. Oh, believe me, Mr. Jerningham, you might have made me a good wife, if you had cared to do so. Men have a power to mould us for which they rarely give themselves credit. It was not because of the twenty years’ difference between our ages that I grew weary of my home, and sighed for more congenial society, for sympathy I had never found there. _That_ was not the gulf between us. It was because you did not love me, and did not even care to pretend any love for me, that I welcomed the friendship of my father’s old friend, and forgot the danger involved in such sympathy. Your marriage was an act of generosity, a chivalrous protection of a helpless kinswoman, and I ought to have been grateful. I was grateful; but a woman’s heart has room for something more than gratitude. A man who marries as you married me is bound to complete his sacrifice. He must give his heart as well as his home and fortune. You gave me your cheque-book, but you let me see only too plainly that in the bargain which made us man and wife there was to be no exchange of hearts. What a union! How many times did we dine _tête-à-tête_ in the two years of our wedded life?--once--twice--well, perhaps half a dozen times; and I can recall your weary yawns, our little conventional speeches, on those rare occasions. For two years we lived under the same roof, and we never even quarrelled. You treated me with unalterable generosity, unchanging courtesy, and you held me at arm’s length; yet if you had wished to make yourself master of my heart, the conquest would have been an easy one. I was wounded by Mr. Desmond’s silence; I was melted by your kindness. It would not have been difficult for me to give you a wife’s devotion.”