She was very unhappy, but to excite my sympathy she was able
to make a show of her unhappiness. It was evident that she
had been prepared to weep, for she had provided herself with a
sufficiency of handkerchiefs; I admired her forethought, but
in retrospect it made her tears perhaps less moving. I could
not decide whether she desired the return of her husband
because she loved him, or because she dreaded the tongue of
scandal; and I was perturbed by the suspicion that the anguish
of love contemned was alloyed in her broken heart with the
pangs, sordid to my young mind, of wounded vanity. I had not
yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know
how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in
the noble, nor how much goodness in the reprobate.
But there was something of an adventure in my trip, and my
spirits rose as I approached Paris. I saw myself, too, from
the dramatic standpoint, and I was pleased with my role of the
trusted friend bringing back the errant husband to his
forgiving wife. I made up my mind to see Strickland the
following evening, for I felt instinctively that the hour must
be chosen with delicacy.
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