O Constance, it is
infamous of me! And why do I do it? Out of consideration for them?
out of kind-heartedness? Not a bit of it! Vanity, my dear; sheer
vanity. If they cared for me less, if I did not feel that they
almost worship me, holding out their old hands to me for all the
pleasure that their day still may bring, would I do it? No; for then
I should not care, as I feel I do now, to keep their good opinion,
even at the expense of making myself appear better, according to
their lights, than I really am. I am a worm; I never thought I could
sink so low. It was so easy to live in tune with Truth beside my
mother; but she was Truth's high-priestess; she never swerved from
the straight path.
I went to church last Sunday; there's a confession! Another such act
of cowardice, and I am lost. It never entered my head, of course, to
go the first Sunday I was here; and as it so happened that I had a
headache that day, no comment was made upon my absence. But on
Saturday the vicar said something about "to-morrow"; Uncle George
invited himself to dinner after service; and when Aunt Caroline
asked me, at breakfast on Sunday, what hat I was going to put on, I
replied, "The small one," and followed her like a lamb.
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