Hurt vanity played a disproportionate part in this crisis.
The effect on him had been different from what Hylda had anticipated. She
had pictured him stricken and dumfounded by the blow. It had never
occurred to her, it did not now, that he had known the truth; for, of
course, to know the truth was to speak, to restore to David his own, to
step down into the second and unconsidered place. After all, to her mind,
there was no disgrace. The late Earl had married secretly, but he had
been duly married, and he did not marry again until Mercy Claridge was
dead. The only wrong was to David, whose grandfather had been even more
to blame than his own father. She had looked to help Eglington in this
moment, and now there seemed nothing for her to do. He was superior to
the situation, though it was apparent in his pale face and rigid manner
that he had been struck hard.
She came near to him, but there was no encouragement to her to play that
part which is a woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort
her man in trouble, sorrow, or evil.
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