That he had never had to do
for Leonora. Perhaps, also, she was at first too obedient. I do not
mean to say that she was submissive-- that she deferred, in her j
udgements, to his. She did not. But she had been handed over to
him, like some patient medieval virgin; she had been taught all her
life that the first duty of a woman is to obey. And there she was.
In her, at least, admiration for his qualities very soon became love
of the deepest description. If his pulses never quickened she, so I
have been told, became what is called an altered being when he
approached her from the other side of a dancing-floor. Her eyes
followed him about full of trustfulness, of admiration, of
gratitude, and of love. He was also, in a great sense, her pastor and
guide--and he guided her into what, for a girl straight out of a
convent, was almost heaven. I have not the least idea of what an
English officer's wife's existence may be like. At any rate, there
were feasts, and chatterings, and nice men who gave her the right
sort of admiration, and nice women who treated her as if she had
been a baby. And her confessor approved of her life, and Edward
let her give little treats to the girls of the convent she had left, and
the Reverend Mother approved of him.
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