Weaker than a Woman — page 249: what you’re looking at

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

240 +. ° WEAKER THAN A WOMAN. ~~ . the long course of seclusion—who saw that the golden | head was not uncovered until the proper time—who brought to her daughter all the news of the outer world, and formed the one link between her and society in gen- eral. | Nothing could have been more decorous or proper, and every one felt it to be quite the right thing to speak of Lady Chevenix as feeling her husband’s loss so keenly that she was no longer able to see any one. Did she feel it so keenly? She never asked herself the question. She had been overwhelmed with the horror of the closing scene—as indeed had every one else who had witnessed it. It had haunted her sleeping and waking hours, as it had the days and nights of every other witness. She had been stunned and bewildered by it. She had been so frightened that all her natural high spirits had left her. Did she regret Sir Owen very much? She could not tell —she never asked herself the question. She had been shocked, startled, horrified—but it was not the keen sorrow of her loss that made her shrink from all observation. — It was rather the reaction from what she had suffered. And she suffered still. She often started in alarm from her seat, her heart beating with terror, thinking that she heard her husband’s voice; then she remembered that he was dead. She woke often from her sleep, her pillow wet with tears, her whole frame trembling with the horror of some terrible dream, in which her husband was an active figure —and then she remembered with a strange emotion that he was dead. It was strange to go about the house without fear; it was strange to give her orders with certainty that thev would be obeyed; it was strange to know that she need tremble and suffer no more. There were to be no more anxious hours spent in waiting for her husband to go out and come in; it was all over—he wac dead. She said the words to herself a hundred times each day—" Sir Owen is dead.” She had found it difficult to realize her subser- vience; she found it just as difficult to realize her inde- pendence. She told herself at times that she was absolute mistress of Garswood—absolute mistress of thirty thou- — sand a.year; but she could neither realize nor understand it. One day Lord Arlington found it necessary to see Lady ‘Chevenix on businsss; he was accompanied by Captain Hill. She received them with quiet grace, and listened with intelligence to all their business statements; then she comicbooks.com |