I started to my feet as suddenly as if he had struck me. If I had been a man, I would have knocked him down on the threshold of his own door, and have left his house, never on any earthly consideration to enter it again. But I was only a woman⁠—and I loved his wife so dearly!

Thank God, that faithful love helped me, and I sat down again without saying a word.

She

knew what I had suffered and what I had suppressed. She ran round to me, with the tears streaming from her eyes. “Oh, Marian!” she whispered softly. “If my mother had been alive, she could have done no more for me!”