But latterly she had learned to understand that all
this was not possible for her. Though one law allowed it, another law
disallowed it, and the latter law was at least as powerful as the
former. And then her present misery was enhanced by the fact that
she was now banished from the second home which she had formerly
possessed. Hitherto she had always been able to escape from Lady
Baldock to the house of her friend, but now such escape was out of
the question. Lady Laura and Lord Chiltern lived in the same house,
and Violet could not live with them.
Lady Baldock understood all this, and tortured her niece accordingly.
It was not premeditated torture. The aunt did not mean to make her
niece's life a burden to her, and, so intending, systematically work
upon a principle to that effect. Lady Baldock, no doubt, desired
to do her duty conscientiously. But the result was torture to poor
Violet, and a strong conviction on the mind of each of the two ladies
that the other was the most unreasonable being in the world.
The aunt, in these days, had taken it into her head to talk of poor
Lord Chiltern. This arose partly from a belief that the quarrel was
final, and that, therefore, there would be no danger in aggravating
Violet by this expression of pity,--partly from a feeling that it
would be better that her niece should marry Lord Chiltern than that
she should not marry at all,--and partly, perhaps, from the general
principle that, as she thought it right to scold her niece on all
occasions, this might be best done by taking an opposite view of
all questions to that taken by the niece to be scolded.
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