“You may well say, Oh! As for me, if I had ever fainted in my life I would have fainted then. She was a beautiful creature; but the sight of her brought a sickness to my very heart. She was like a wild hunted thing, frightened to death for me and everything that was civilised--looking out of her wild black eyes to see how she could escape--shrinking back not to be touched as if she thought I would give her a blow. Blame! you might as well blame a deer that it let itself be taken, poor, bonnie, panting, senseless thing! I blamed nobody, Mary; I was just appalled, neither more nor less, at the man’s folly that had done it. Think of a son of mine having so little command of himself! The madness of it! for it was no question of making a lady of her, a woman that could take his mother’s place. She had to be tamed first out of her gipsy ways, tamed like a wild beast, and taught to live in a house, and wear decent clothes as she had never done in her life.” A low cry of dismay and wonder came from the listener’s lips, and a strange pang which nobody knew of went through her heart--a pang indescribable, mingled of misery, humiliation, and a kind of guilty and bitter pride; guilty, though she was innocent enough. This was his choice, she said to herself; and that sharp and stinging contempt--more painful to herself than to the object of it--which a woman sometimes permits herself to feel for a man who has slighted her, shot through the gentlest soul in the world. “I cannot tell you,” said Lady Eskside, her voice sinking low so that her companion had to stoop forward to hear, “all that I went through. She broke away from us, and got back to her people more than once. Our ways were misery and bondage to her. At first she had to be dressed like a child--watched like a child. Her husband had no influence over her, and she was frightened for me: the moment she was out of our sight her whole mind was busy with schemes to get away.” “But what reason--what motive----” began the other, faltering. “None,” said Lady Eskside. “Listen, Mary; there was one thing. She was good, as people call good; there was no wickedness in her, as a woman. What wife meant, in any higher sense, she was ignorant of; but there was no harm--no harm. Always remember this, whatever may happen, and whatever you may hear. I say it--Richard’s mother--that can have no motive to shield her. She wanted her freedom, nothing more. She was not an ill woman; nothing bad--in that way--was in her head. She would have put her knife into the man who spoke lightly to her, as soon as look at him. She was proud in her way of being Richard’s wife. She felt the difference it made between her and others. But she was like a wild animal, or a bird. She would not be caged, and there was too deep an ignorance in her to learn. There was no foundation to build upon--neither ambition, nor pride, nor any feeling that the like of us expect to find.”