Her timid drooping ways and her Majesty
sympathies offended her husband, shown up before him as they were by
his daughters, and, in short, her life had been utterly miserable.
Probably, as Annora said, she had been wanting in spirit to rise to
her situation, but of course that was not as my brother saw it. He
only beheld what he would have cherished torn from him only to be
crushed and flung aside at his very feet, yet so that honour and duty
forbade him to do anything for her.
What he said, or what comfort he gave her, I do not fully know, for
when he confided to me what grief it was that lay so heavily on his
heart and spirits, he dwelt more on her sad situation than on
anything else. The belief in her weakness and inconstancy had evoked
in him a spirit of defiance and resistance; but when she was proved
guiltless and unhappy, the burden, though less bitter, was far
heavier. I only gathered that he, as the only like-minded adviser
she had seen for so long, had felt it his duty to force himself to
seem almost hard, cold, and pitiless in the counsel he gave her.
I remember his very words as he writhed himself with the pain of
remembrance: 'And then, Meg, I had to treat the poor child as if I
were stone of adamant, and chide her when my very heart was breaking
for her. One moment's softening, and where should we have been? And
now I have added to her troubles that fancy that I was obdurate in my
anger and implacability.
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