No, any great grief, though
the grief itself may have gone, leaves in its place a train of
horrors, of misery, and despair. For Leonora was, in herself,
relieved. She felt that she could trust Edward with the girl and she
knew that Nancy could be absolutely trusted. And then, with the
slackening of her vigilance, came the slackening of her entire
mind. This is perhaps the most miserable part of the entire story.
For it is miserable to see a clean intelligence waver; and Leonora
wavered.
You are to understand that Leonora loved Edward with a passion
that was yet like an agony of hatred. And she had lived with him
for years and years without addressing to him one word of
tenderness. I don't know how she could do it. At the beginning of
that relationship she had been just married off to him. She had
been one of seven daughters in a bare, untidy Irish manor-house to
which she had returned from the convent I have so often spoken
of. She had left it just a year and she was just nineteen. It is
impossible to imagine such inexperience as was hers. You might
almost say that she had never spoken to a man except a priest.
Coming straight from the convent, she had gone in behind the
high walls of the manor-house that was almost more cloistral than
any convent could have been.
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