She quivered under the open stare, or the look askance of
members of her sex; if she showed a brave front, it was that of the
Spartan boy! Philip was particularly fond of the opera and the play; he
would not have gone without her; so she accompanied him, and made no
demur. Of course every relation and friend she had in the world shunned
her as though she were a leper, which indeed, morally, she was in their
eyes. She loved society; no woman was more calculated to shine in it,
and from this she was cut off. True, they constantly entertained
brilliant and clever men, whose conversation and company were very
agreeable to her; but, however much a woman may like, may even prefer
the society of men, it is a bitter thought to her that she cannot
command that of her own sex. And, though men treated her with even a
greater and more delicate courtesy than they would perhaps have shown
their own women, Virginia was none the less keenly conscious of the
moral ban under which she lay.
She was the daughter of a clergyman, she had been religiously brought
up, and she writhed under the terrible consciousness that her life was a
sin against her God. At first she went to church, but everything she
heard there sent the iron deeper into her soul; if there were comforting
promises to repentant Magdalens, there was nothing but wrath and
threatening for those who continued in their sin.
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