imbecile institution as to expect her to take on the impossible job
of making Edward Ashburnham a faithful husband. She had, as
the English would say, the Nonconformist temperament. In the
United States of North America we call it the New England
conscience. For, of course, that frame of mind has been driven in
on the English Catholics. The centuries that they have gone
through--centuries of blind and malignant oppression, of
ostracism from public employment, of being, as it were, a small
beleagured garrison in a hostile country, and therefore having to
act with great formality--all these things have combined to
perform that conjuring trick. And I suppose that Papists in England
are even technically Nonconformists.

Continental Papists are a dirty, jovial and unscrupulous crew. But
that, at least, lets them be opportunists. They would have fixed
poor dear Edward up all right. (Forgive my writing of these
monstrous things in this frivolous manner. If I did not I should
break down and cry.) In Milan, say, or in Paris, Leonora would
have had her marriage dissolved in six months for two hundred
dollars paid in the right quarter. And Edward would have drifted
about until he became a tramp of the kind I have suggested. Or he
would have married a barmaid who would have made him such
frightful scenes in public places and would so have torn out his
moustache and left visible signs upon his face that he would have
been faithful to her for the rest of his days. That was what he
wanted to redeem him. . . .

For, along with his passions and his shames there went the dread
of scenes in public places, of outcry, of excited physical violence;
of publicity, in short. Yes, the barmaid would have cured him.