It was damnable. And
he, Rowcliffe, could have prevented it if he had only known. And if
Mary had not lied to him.
And when his common sense warned him of their danger, and his
conscience reproached him with leading her into it, he said to
himself, "I can't help it if it is dangerous. It's been taken out of
my hands. If somebody doesn't drag her out of doors, she'll get ill.
If somebody doesn't talk to her she'll grow morbid. And there's nobody
but me."
He sheltered himself in the immensity of her tragedy. Its darkness
covered them. Her sadness and her isolation sanctified them. Alice had
her husband and her child. Mary had--all she wanted. Gwenda had nobody
but him.
* * * * *
She had never had anybody but him. For in the beginning the Vicar and
his daughters had failed to make friends among their own sort. Up in
the Dale there had been few to make, and those few Mr. Cartaret had
contrived to alienate one after another by his deplorable legend and
by the austere unpleasantness of his personality. People had not been
prepared for intimacy with a Vicar separated so outrageously from his
third wife. Nobody knew whether it was he or his third wife who had
been outrageous, but the Vicar's manner was not such as to procure for
him the benefit of any doubt. The fact remained that the poor man
was handicapped by an outrageous daughter, and Alice's behavior was
obviously as much the Vicar's fault as his misfortune.
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