"Who
would have thought," the red-faced matrons of the cottages
remarked, over their quart of bitter, "the pore thing had it in
her! But there, it's these demure ones as is always the slyest!"
For Bower Lane could only judge that austere soul by its own vulgar
standard (as did also Belgravia). Most low minds, indeed, imagine
absolute hypocrisy must be involved in any striving after goodness
and abstract right-doing on the part of any who happen to
disbelieve in their own blood-thirsty deities, or their own vile
woman-degrading and prostituting morality. In the topsy-turvy
philosophy of Bower Lane and of Belgravia, what is usual is right;
while any conscious striving to be better and nobler than the mass
around one is regarded at once as either insane or criminal.
VIII.
They were bound for Italy; so Alan had decided. Turning over in his
mind the pros and cons of the situation, he had wisely determined
that Herminia's confinement had better take place somewhere else
than in England. The difficulties and inconveniences which block
the way in English lodgings would have been well-nigh insufferable;
in Italy, people would only know that an English signora and her
husband had taken apartments for a month or two in some solemn old
palazzo.
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