In that terrible conflict between you and
me on the night following the landslip, you spoke of my "cruel
pride." Oh, Henry, if you only knew how that cruel pride had been
wiped out of existence by remorse, I believe that even you would
forgive me. I believe that even she would if she were here.'
'I told you that I had entirely forgiven you, mother, and that I was
sure Winnie would forgive you if she were alive.'
'You did, Henry, but it did not satisfy me; I felt that you did not
know all.'
'I fear you have been very unhappy,' I said.
'I have been constantly thinking of Winifred a beggar in the streets
as described by Wilderspin. Oh, Henry, I used to think of her in the
charge of that woman. And Miss Dalrymple, who educated her, tells me
that in culture she was far above the girls of her own class; and
this makes the degradation into which she was forced through me the
more dreadful for me to think of. I used to think of her dying in the
squalid den, and then the Italian sunshine has seemed darker than a
London fog. Even the comfort that your kind words gave me was
incomplete, for you did not know the worst features of my cruelty.
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