Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/192

 working a pair of ruffles for him; that his presence would make their poor cottage seem a palace. "Pardon my interrupting you," she winds up with ostentatious meekness. "I mean to give you satisfaction. Though I am deeply wronged by your error, I am not resentful. I wish you all the happiness of which you are capable, and am your once loved and still affectionate, Emilia."

That last sentence is not without dignity, and certainly not without its sting. One doubts whether Emilia's husband, for all her promises and protestations, could ever again have felt perfectly "easy" in his wife's society. He probably therefore stayed away, and soothed his soul elsewhere. "We can with tranquillity forgive in ourselves the sins of which no one accuses us."