She says that you are always upon our
way--I don't know how, I am sure. She says, but for you I should have
been--you know what I should have been: but I am thankful that I wasn't,
and Kew has got a much nicer wife in Henrietta Pulleyn, than I could ever
have been to him. She will be happier than Clara, Clive. Kew is one of
the kindest creatures in the world--not very wise; not very strong: but
he is just such a kind, easy, generous little man, as will make a girl
like Henrietta quite happy.
Clive. But not you, Ethel?
Ethel. No, nor I him. My temper is difficult, Clive, and I fear few men
would bear with me. I feel, somehow, always very lonely. How old am I?
Twenty--I feel sometimes as if I was a hundred; and in the midst of all
these admirations and fetes and flatteries, so tired, oh, so tired! And
yet if I don't have them, I miss them. How I wish I was religious like
Madame de Florac: there is no day that she does not go to church. She is
for ever busy with charities, clergymen, conversions; I think the
Princess will be brought over ere long--that dear old Madame de Florac!
and yet she is no happier than the rest of us.
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