Many a woman now would have shown her hostility, but Mrs. Brandon was, by
nature, a woman who showed nothing. She did not even show anything to
herself, but all the deeper, because it found no expression, did her
hatred penetrate. She scored now little marks against him for everything
that he did. She did not say to herself that a day of vengeance was
coming, she did not think of anything so melodramatic, she expected
nothing of her future at all--but the marks were there.
The situation was developed by Falk's return from Oxford. When he was away
her love for him seemed to her simply all in the world that she possessed.
He wrote to her very seldom, but she made her Sunday letters to him the
centre of her week, and wrote as though they were a passionately devoted
mother and son. She allowed herself this little gentle deception--it was
her only one.
But when he returned and was in the house it was more difficult to cheat
herself. She saw at once that he had something on his mind, that he was
engaged in some pursuit that he kept from every one. She discovered, too,
that she was the one of whom he was afraid, and rightly so, the Archdeacon
being incapable of discovering any one's pursuits so long as he was
engaged on one of his own.
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