Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny it."
"And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. Your
husband used always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he
not?"
"Yes," she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain in the
street of a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory
taste which had been offended, and not her nature or her
affection? Fortunately, or unfortunately, at that moment they saw
Melbury's man driving vacantly along the street in search of her,
the hour having passed at which he had been told to take her up.
Winterborne hailed him, and she was powerless then to prolong the
discourse. She entered the vehicle sadly, and the horse trotted
away.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of
a pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared
anew that they could never be happy together, even should she be
free to choose him. She was accomplished; he was unrefined. It
was the original difficulty, which he was too sensitive to
recklessly ignore, as some men would have done in his place.
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