He hardly doubted
but that he could stamp it out. Though he should have to take her
away to some further corner of the world, he would stamp it out.
But she, when this foolish passion of hers should have been thus
stamped out, could never be the pure, the bright, the unsullied,
unsoiled thing, of the possession of which he had thought so much.
He had never spoken of his hopes about her even to his wife, but
in the silence of his very silent life he had thought much of the
day when he would give her to some noble youth,--noble with all the
gifts of nobility, including rank and wealth,--who might be fit to
receive her. Now, even though no one else should know it,--and all
would know it,--she would be the girl who had condescended to love
young Tregear.
His own Duchess, she whose loss to him now was as though he had
lost half of his limbs,--had not she in the same way loved a
Tregear, or worse than a Tregear, in her early days? Ah, yes!
And though his Cora had been so much to him, had he not often
felt, had he not been feeling all his days, that Fate had robbed
him of the sweetest joy that is given to man, in that she had not
come to him loving him with her early spring of love, as she had
loved that poor ne'er-do-well? How infinite had been his regrets.
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