The Way We Live Now | Page 7

of the evil. But in doing all
this she schemed, and lied, and lived a life of manoeuvres. Then, at last,
when she felt that she was no longer quite a young woman, she allowed
herself to attempt to form friendships for herself, and among her friends
was one of the other sex. If fidelity in a wife be compatible with such
friendship, if the married state does not exact from a woman the
necessity of debarring herself from all friendly intercourse with any
man except her lord, Lady Carbury was not faithless. But Sir Carbury
became jealous, spoke words which even she could not endure, did
things which drove even her beyond the calculations of her prudence
and she left him. But even this she did in so guarded a way that, as to
every step she took, she could prove her innocence. Her life at that
period is of little moment to our story, except that it is essential that the
reader should know in what she had been slandered. For a month or
two all hard words had been said against her by her husband's friends,
and even by Sir Patrick himself. But gradually the truth was known,
and after a year's separation they came again together and she remained
the mistress of his house till he died. She brought him home to England,
but during the short period left to him of life in his old country he had
been a worn-out, dying invalid. But the scandal of her great misfortune
had followed her, and some people were never tired of reminding
others that in the course of her married life Lady Carbury had run away
from her husband, and had been taken back again by the kind-hearted
old gentleman.
Sir Patrick had left behind him a moderate fortune, though by no means
great wealth. To his son, who was now Sir Felix Carbury, he had left
L1,000 a year; and to his widow as much, with a provision that after
her death the latter sum should be divided between his son and
daughter. It therefore came to pass that the young man, who had
already entered the army when his father died, and upon whom
devolved no necessity of keeping a house, and who in fact not
unfrequently lived in his mother's house, had an income equal to that
with which his mother and sister were obliged to maintain a roof over
their head. Now Lady Carbury, when she was released from her
thraldom at the age of forty, had no idea at all of passing her future life
amidst the ordinary penances of widowhood. She had hitherto
endeavoured to do her duty, knowing that in accepting her position she

was bound to take the good and the bad together. She had certainly
encountered hitherto much that was bad. To be scolded, watched,
beaten, and sworn at by a choleric old man till she was at last driven
out of her house by the violence of his ill-usage; to be taken back as a
favour with the assurance that her name would for the remainder of her
life be unjustly tarnished; to have her flight constantly thrown in her
face; and then at last to become for a year or two the nurse of a dying
debauchee, was a high price to pay for such good things as she had
hitherto enjoyed. Now at length had come to her a period of relaxation
her reward, her freedom, her chance of happiness. She. Thought much
about herself, and resolved on one or two things. The time for love had
gone by, and she would have nothing to do with it. Nor would she
marry again for convenience. But she would have friends real friends;
friends who could help her and whom possibly she might help. She
would, too, make some career for herself, so that life might not be
without an interest to her. She would live in London, and would
become somebody at any rate in some circle. Accident at first rather
than choice had thrown her among literary people, but that accident had,
during the last two years, been supported and corroborated by the
desire which had fallen upon her of earning money. She had known
from the first that economy would be necessary to her not chiefly or
perhaps not at all from a feeling that she and her daughter could not
live comfortably together on a thousand a year but on behalf of her son.
She wanted no luxury but a house so placed that people might conceive
of her that she lived in a proper part of the town. Of her daughter's
prudence she was as well convinced as of her own. She could trust
Henrietta in everything. But her son, Sir