He would have done so
much less harm; he would have been much less agonized too. At
any rate, he would have had fewer chances of ruining and of
remorse. For Edward was great at remorse. But Leonora's English
Catholic conscience, her rigid principles, her coldness, even her
very patience, were, I cannot help thinking, all wrong in this
special case. She quite seriously and na?vely imagined that the
Church of Rome disapproves of divorce; she quite seriously and
na?vely believed that her church could be such a monstrous and
imbecile institution as to expect her to take on the impossible job
of making Edward Ashburnham a faithful husband. She had, as
the English would say, the Nonconformist temperament. In the
United States of North America we call it the New England
conscience. For, of course, that frame of mind has been driven in
on the English Catholics. The centuries that they have gone
through--centuries of blind and malignant oppression, of
ostracism from public employment, of being, as it were, a small
beleagured garrison in a hostile country, and therefore having to
act with great formality--all these things have combined to
perform that conjuring trick.
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