worship a hollow idol, a poor creature who flung her the love of a
selfish husband as the wages of her continual self-sacrifice; who saw
nothing in her but the woman; and who either did not think it worth
while, or (wrong quite as deep) did not think at all of troubling
himself about her pleasures, of inquiring into the cause of her low
spirits and dwindling health? And the Marquis, like most men who chafe
under a wife's superiority, saved his self-love by arguing from
Julie's physical feebleness a corresponding lack of mental power, for
which he was pleased to pity her; and he would cry out upon fate which
had given him a sickly girl for a wife. The executioner posed, in
fact, as the victim.

All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the Marquise, who still
must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with
flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with
secret torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of
both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise
unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue
which became her safeguard amid many dangers.

Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this intimate
closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her unthinking, girlish
first love, had roused in her an abhorrence of passion; possibly she
had no conception of its rapture, nor of the forbidden but frenzied
bliss for which some women will renounce all the laws of prudence and
the principles of conduct upon which society is based. She put from
her like a dream the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love
promised by Mme. de Listomere-Landon's mature experience, and waited
resignedly for the end of her troubles with a hope that she might die
young.