would ever occur to me! It's only that ... that
somehow my brain won't take it in. Agnes has always been such a dear
good little soul, all kindness. She's never done anybody any harm or
said a hard word about any one, all the years I've known her. I simply
CAN'T believe it of her, and that's the truth. As for what people will
say when it gets about that you've been shown the door in a house like
Mr. Henry's--why, I'm afraid even to think of it!" and powerless any
longer to keep back her tears, Mary hastened from the room.

But she also thought it wiser to get away before Richard had time to
frame the request that she should break off all intercourse with Plevna
House. This, she could never promise to do; and the result might be a
quarrel. Whereas if she avoided giving her word, she would be free to
slip out now and then to see poor Agnes, when Richard was on his rounds
and Mr. Henry at business. But this was the only point clear to her. In
standing up for her friend she had been perfectly sincere: to think ill
of a person she cared for, cost Mary an inward struggle. Against this,
however, she had an antipathy to set that was almost stronger than
herself. Of all forms of vice, intemperance was the one she hated most.
She lived in a country where it was, alas! only too common; but she had
never learnt to tolerate it, or to look with a lenient eye on those who
succumbed: and whether these were but slaves of the nipping habit; or
the eternal dram-drinkers who felt fit for nothing if they had not a
peg inside them; or those seasoned topers who drank their companions
under the table without themselves turning a hair; or yet again those
who, sober for three parts of the year, spent the fourth in secret
debauches. Herself she had remained as rigidly abstemious as in the
days of her girlhood. And she often mused, with a glow at her heart, on
her great good fortune in having found in Richard one whose views on
this subject were no less strict than her own. Hence her distress at
his disclosure was caused not alone by the threatened loss of a
friendship: she wept for the horror with which the knowledge filled her.

Little by little, though, her mind worked round to what was, after all,
the chief consideration: Richard's action and its probable
consequences. And here once more she was divided against herself. For a
moment she had hoped her husband would own the chance of him being in
error. But she soon saw that this would never do