Should She Have Left Him? — page 249: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

236 SHOULD SHE HAVE LEFT HIM? he led, restrained a little less, perhaps, by a sense of propriety and good taste, she felt that in looking down into the depths of Hilda’s misery she saw glimpses of the life of half the households of her acquaintances. When she thought of Hilda, alone in that great house, in the flush of health, young and beautiful, yet with not a single ray of hope to lift her up, she thought she was looking into the hearts of half the women with whom, in her gitl- hood, she had romped and played. With that peculiar perversity I have noted more than once in the course this veracious history, she actually said to herself: “In a world where common sense and good morals reign, Hilda’s position with Lord But- tontrave would be considered no worse than he‘ position with Waldemar, in which union onl wealth and high position were considered.” Of course she was very bitter, and it must b& admitted she was very sorry forher sister. She ha acquiesced in the proposed virtual separation o Hilda from Waldemar, not as a settlement of her™ troubles, but as a mitigation of the horrors o Hilda’s life. And this woman, bred in the most exclusive circles of that society, in the most conser- vative manner, educated to believe that position within it was the highest aim of life, was led by her thoughts to pronounce, as the summation of her observations and experience, this dictum: “Its teachings lead women to forget their self-respect and virtue; Hilda should have a divorce.” The justice of my fear, that Mesdames Deekman and a CONnIICOO @ cS (GO)