Our ruin, utter as it now is,
would have been complete ten years sooner, and we should have shown
the world the spectacle of a husband and wife living quite apart--a
scandal of the most horrible, heart-breaking kind, for it is the
destruction of the family. Neither your brother nor you could have
married.
"I sacrificed myself, and that so bravely, that, till this last
connection of your father's, the world has believed me happy. My
serviceable and indeed courageous falsehood has, till now, screened
Hector; he is still respected; but this old man's passion is taking
him too far, that I see. His own folly, I fear, will break through the
veil I have kept between the world and our home. However, I have held
that curtain steady for twenty-three years, and have wept behind it
--motherless, I, without a friend to trust, with no help but in
religion--I have for twenty-three years secured the family honor----"
Hortense listened with a fixed gaze. The calm tone of resignation and
of such crowning sorrow soothed the smart of her first wound; the
tears rose again and flowed in torrents. In a frenzy of filial
affection, overcome by her mother's noble heroism, she fell on her
knees before Adeline, took up the hem of her dress and kissed it, as
pious Catholics kiss the holy relics of a martyr.
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