I must add, however, that a long time passed over before I could even think that Mrs Peveril might have something to say on her side. It was not because of the rupture between Mr Durham and myself, and the sudden conclusion of that dream and all that it seemed likely to bring with it. No doubt these things embittered all my feelings about her; but yet I was reasonable enough to come to see that it was not her fault--that she had kept out of the way with all her might--and that after all she could not foresee that another complication might arise between him and me. She could not of course foresee this; and even if she had foreseen it, what could she have done? I think it shows I was not unfair in my judgment, for a girl of seventeen, to say that I soon came to see that. But though I did not blame her, of course I was embittered against her, and took refuge in being very angry with her on other grounds. That she should have said our living together was a mistake was the chief of these. Why was it a mistake? Did she mean to say it was my fault? If it was simply her fault, as I felt sure it was, why did she call it a mistake? Why not say plainly out, “I was wrong, and so we got into trouble?” How easy it seems to be for people to acknowledge themselves in the wrong! but not so easy for one’s self, somehow. I never met anybody who liked doing it, though I have met with so many who ought to have done it, and to whom it would have been so simple--so easy, I thought; but that never seemed to be their opinion. Mrs Tufnell, who is in some things a very odd old lady, says it never is anybody’s fault. “There was never any quarrel yet,” she will say, “but there were two in it--there was never any misunderstanding but two were in it. There is no such thing as absolute blame on the one side and innocence on the other. Even in your affairs, Mary, my dear----” But this I never can see nor allow. How could I be to blame? Only seventeen, and knowing so little of the world, and expecting everybody to be good and true, and say just what they thought. When a man said he was fond of me, how was I to put up with his having been fond of somebody else? And when a woman professed to be thinking of me, was it natural that I could be pleased to know she had been thinking of herself? I could not help behaving just as I did. It was the only natural, the only possible way; but for them, they ought to have known better, they ought to have thought of me. On the whole that is the thing that hurts one--that goes to one’s heart. People think of themselves first--when they ought to be thinking of you, they think of themselves first. I suppose it is the same all over the world.