met as before at breakfast and at dinner, after which be would leave the house. He never attempted any explanation, and I, always on the eve of desperate measures, maintained an equally guarded silence.
Of course I was in Grosvenor Square frequently during those wretched days, but as I did not allude to my misfortunes, my mother, selfishly afraid of a scandal which might endanger her eminently respectable position in the society which she loved a great deal better than she did her soul, made no effort to ascertain the situation of affairs.
I suppose my husband and I might have lived together pleasantly. There are women in this world—I have met a few of them—who have occupied similar positions with a smile on their faces. I could not do it. I was not a humbug, I was sorry to say. If only young girls were forced to study the elements of humbuggery as a part of an academic curriculum, what a quantity of subsequent suffering some of them would be spared! The study might be absolutely necessary to only a few, but it would be of benefit to all.
