The scandal would be too great.
Well, she had accepted her fate, and this dull aching misery must be lived
through somehow; and neither her father nor Denzil must ever have occasion
to suspect her unhappiness.
"Oh, gracious Mary, Mother of God, help and sustain me in my sorrow! Guard
and deliver me from sinful thoughts. What are my fanciful griefs to thy
great sorrows, which thou didst endure with holy patience? Subdue and bend
me to obedience and humility. Let me be an affectionate daughter, a dutiful
wife, a friend and comforter to my poor neighbours."
So, and with many such prayers she struggled against the dominion of evil,
kneeling meekly in the leafy stillness of that deep beechwood, where no
human eye beheld her devotions. So in the long solitude of the summer day
she held commune with heaven, and fought against that ever-recurring memory
of past happiness, that looking back to the joys and emotions of those
placid hours at Chilton Abbey, before the faintest apprehension of evil had
shadowed her friendship with Fareham. Not to look back; not to remember
and regret. That was the struggle in which the intense abstraction of
the believer, lifting the mind to heaven, alone could help her.
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