If it had been such a crime, as for
a moment she dimly perceived it might have been, then through the long
centuries there had been piled up a catalogue of wrong and outrage
which, if the law of compensation be a law of nature, must some time,
somewhere, in some way, be atoned for. She herself had not escaped the
penalty, of which, she realized, this burden placed upon her conscience
was but another installment.
If she should make known the facts she had learned, it would mean
what?--a division of her father's estate, a recognition of the legality
of her father's relations with Julia. Such a stain upon her father's
memory would be infinitely worse than if he had _not_ married her. To
have lived with her without marriage was a social misdemeanor, at which
society in the old days had winked, or at most had frowned. To have
married her was to have committed the unpardonable social sin. Such a
scandal Mrs. Carteret could not have endured. Should she seek to make
restitution, it would necessarily involve the disclosure of at least
some of the facts. Had she not destroyed the will, she might have
compromised with her conscience by producing it and acting upon its
terms, which had been so stated as not to disclose the marriage. This
was now rendered impossible by her own impulsive act; she could not
mention the will at all, without admitting that she had destroyed it.
Mrs. Carteret found herself in what might be called, vulgarly, a moral
"pocket.
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