Eleven miles we had to drive! And then suddenly the bitterness of
the endless poverty, of the endless acting--it fell on me like a
blight, it spoilt everything. Yes, I had to realize that I had been
spoilt even for the good time when it came. And I burst out crying
and I cried and I cried for the whole eleven miles. Just imagine
me crying! And just imagine me making a fool of the poor dear
chap like that. It certainly wasn't playing the game, was it now?"
I don't know; I don't know; was that last remark of hers the remark
of a harlot, or is it what every decent woman, county family or not
county family, thinks at the bottom of her heart? Or thinks all the
time for the matter of that? Who knows?
Yet, if one doesn't know that at this hour and day, at this pitch of
civilization to which we have attained, after all the preachings of
all the moralists, and all the teachings of all the mothers to all the
daughters in saecula saeculorum . . . but perhaps that is what all
mothers teach all daughters, not with lips but with the eyes, or
with heart whispering to heart. And, if one doesn't know as much
as that about the first thing in the world, what does one know and
why is one here?
I asked Mrs Ashburnham whether she had told Florence that and
what Florence had said and she answered:--"Florence didn't offer
any comment at all.
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