Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/170

Her name was in all men's mouths. The spotlessness of her reputation had departed, never to return. She might have been a happy wife and mother, and now what was she? A creature shunned by her kind, fallen from her pedestal, and blackened by crime. Ah! it was pitiful to think of; still more pitiful to trace the folly, vanity, and wrong-doing which had brought about such a result. Why could they not have rested content with one another's love. What a fevered, unnatural existence theirs had been of late years. He smiled a wan smile, as it occurred to him that their histories contained an unwonted amount of sensation and melodrama. Their experiences would form a strange narrative. Once, long ago, Fenella had loved him truly and well. Of that he felt morally certain. If he had only exercised a little patience with his beautiful child wife, and sought to correct her errors by example, rather than by preaching and criticism, how differently things might have turned out. She was young. Her faults were chiefly those of youth and ignorance, combined with the natural craving for admiration of a pretty woman. But there was no harm in her—then. She might have been guided. A girl in her teens is made of plastic material. Her character is not firmly set as a rule, either for good or evil. It was in his power to have influenced her, and to have developed the finer side of her nature. But, instead of this, what had he