To Lydia this view of life had become a matter of course, just as
lumbering about in her mother-in-law's landau had come to seem the only
possible means of locomotion, and listening every Sunday to a fashionable
Presbyterian divine the inevitable atonement for having thought oneself
bored on the other six days of the week. Before she met Gannett her life
had seemed merely dull: his coming made it appear like one of those dismal
Cruikshank prints in which the people are all ugly and all engaged in
occupations that are either vulgar or stupid.
It was natural that Tillotson should be the chief sufferer from this
readjustment of focus. Gannett's nearness had made her husband ridiculous,
and a part of the ridicule had been reflected on herself. Her tolerance
laid her open to a suspicion of obtuseness from which she must, at all
costs, clear herself in Gannett's eyes.
She did not understand this until afterwards. At the time she fancied that
she had merely reached the limits of endurance. In so large a charter of
liberties as the mere act of leaving Tillotson seemed to confer, the small
question of divorce or no divorce did not count. It was when she saw that
she had left her husband only to be with Gannett that she perceived the
significance of anything affecting their relations. Her husband, in
casting her off, had virtually flung her at Gannett: it was thus that the
world viewed it. The measure of alacrity with which Gannett would receive
her would be the subject of curious speculation over afternoon-tea tables
and in club corners.
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