Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/217

 , one had an opportunity of recovering one’s perspective. I had tided Arthur through his great crisis; and there was nothing, I felt, to fear in the future. But we could not let it rest at that. There had been an intolerable amount of malicious gossip—how wide-spread I could not believe until the proof was thrust before me—; men jesting in their clubs, women gloating. . . And you may be sure that the Brackenbury and Spenworth broods were only too delighted to think that yet another had been dragged down to their level; if one was not to be a by-word and an object of scorn. . . Goodness me, I wasn’t thinking of my own poor dignity, but these stories had to be stopped somehow. In the school in which I was brought up one was supposed to set something of an example; for what it may be worth, one does occupy a certain niche; it was more than time for us to shew that there had been no catastrophe, as our kind friends would have liked to think.

“Arthur,” I said, “you will never hear me allude to this again. We have passed through a time of trouble, but God has mercifully brought us into safety. For some months we have been spied on and whispered about; it is our duty to shew a happy and united front!”