Presently he left that subject and came to Vere.
When he did this he was conscious at once of a change within him. His
tenderness and pity for Hermione were replaced by another tenderness
and pity. And these were wholly for Vere. Hermione was suffering
because of Maurice. But Vere was surely suffering, subconsciously,
because of Hermione.
There were two links in the chain of suffering, that between Maurice
and Hermione, and that between Hermione and Vere.
For a moment he felt as if Vere were bereaved, were motherless. The
sensation passed directly he realized the exaggeration in his mind.
But he still felt as if the girl were deprived of something which she
ought to possess, which, till now, he had thought she did possess. It
seemed to him that Vere stood quite outside of her mother's life,
instead of in it, in its centre, its core; and he pitied the child,
almost as he pitied other children from time to time, children to whom
their parents were indifferent. And yet Hermione loved Vere, and Vere
could not know what he had only known completely to-day--that the
mother often felt lonely with the child.
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