ht
have seemed, on the abstract rightness of what she had done, on the fact
that, ideally speaking, her act could not be made less right, less
justifiable, by the special accidental consequences that had flowed from
it. Because these consequences had caught her in a web of tragic
fatality she would not be guilty of the weakness of tracing back the
disaster to any intrinsic error in her original motive. Why, then, if
this was her real, her proud attitude toward the past--and since those
about her believed in her sincerity, and accepted her justification as
valid from her point of view if not from theirs--why had she not been
able to maintain her posture, to carry on life on the terms she had
exacted from others?

A special circumstance contributed to this feeling of distrust; the
fact, namely, that Justine, a week after her departure from Hanaford,
had written to say that she could not, from that moment till her return,
consent to accept any money from Amherst. As her manner was, she put her
reasons clearly and soberly, without evasion or ambiguity.

"Since you and I," she wrote, "have always agreed in regarding the
Westmore money as a kind of wage for our services at the mills, I
cannot be satisfied to go on drawing that wage while I am unable to do
any work in return. I am sure you must feel as I do about this; and you
need have no anxiety as to the practical side of the question, since I
have enough to live on in some savings from my hospital days, which were
invested for me two years ago by Harry Dressel, and are beginning to
bring in a small return. This being the case, I feel I can afford to
interpret in any way I choose the terms of the bargain between myself
and Westmore."

On reading this, Amherst's mind had gone through the strange dual
process which now marked all his judgments of his wife. At first he had
fancied he understood her, and had felt that he should have done as she
did; then the usual reaction of distrust set in, and he asked himself
why she, who had so little of the conventional attitude toward money,
should now develop this unexpected susceptibility. And so the old
question presented itself in another shape: if she had nothing to
reproach herself for, why was it intolerable to her to live on Bessy's
money? The fact that she was doing no actual service at Westmore did not
account for her scruples--she would have been the last person to think
that a sick servant should be docked of his pay. Her