But now--how can any individual, he asked himself, with
political work to do, affect to despise the opinions and prejudices of
society? A politician with great reforms to put through will make no
friction round him that he can avoid--unless he is a fool. It weighed
sorely, therefore, on his present mind that Madame d'Estrees was in
Venice--that she was a person of blemished repute--that he must be and
was ashamed of her. It would have been altogether out of consonance with
his character to put any obstacle in the way of Kitty's seeing her
mother. But he chafed as he had never yet chafed under the humiliation
of his relationship to the notorious Margaret Fitzgerald of the forties,
who had been old Blackwater's
chere amie before she married him, and,
as Lady Blackwater, had sacrificed her innocent and defenceless
step-daughter to one of her own lovers, in order to secure for him the
step-daughter's fortune--black and dastardly deed!
Was it all part of the general growth and concentration that any shrewd
observer might have read in William Ashe?--the pressure--enormous,
unseen--of the traditional English ideals, English standards, asserting
itself at last in a brilliant and paradoxical nature? It had been
so--conspicuously--in the case of one of his political predecessors.
Pages:
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521