"
Polly's attitude might be selfish, unfeeling; but the fundamental
incapacity for gratitude in girls of Polly's class will probably
surprise and pain their mistresses until the end of the world. After
all, Polly was right. An attempt to clear Raoul by telling the
superficial truth must involve terrible risks, and might at any turn
enforce a choice between full confession and falsehood.
Dorothea could not bring herself to lie, even heroically; and there
would be no heroism in lying to save herself. On the other hand, the
thought of a forced confession--it might he before a tribunal--was
too hideous. No, the suggestion had been a mad one, and Polly had
rightly thrown cold water on it. Also, it had demanded too much of
Polly, who could not be expected to jeopardise her matrimonial
prospects to right a wrong for which she was not in truth responsible.
Dorothea loved a hero, but knew she was no heroine. She called herself
a pitiful coward--unjustly, because, nurtured as she had been on the
proprieties, surrounded all her days by men and women of a class most
sensitive to public opinion, who feared the breath of scandal worse
than a plague, confession for her must mean a shame unspeakable. What!
Admit that she, Dorothea Westcote, had loved a French prisoner almost
young enough to be her son! that she had given him audience at night!
that he had been shot and captured beneath her window!
Unjustly, too, she accused herself, because it is the decision, not
the terror felt in deciding, which distinguishes the brave from the
cowardly.
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