The frightfully business-like manner of disposing of her happiness
appalled the listener into silence. The loss of Frederic; the
destruction of her love-dream; the weary years of lonely
wretchedness that would follow the bereavement, were to him only
unimportant incidentals to her "affair;" weighed in the scale of his
impartial judgment no more than would unconsidered dust. For the
first time in the life to which he had been the guiding-star, she
ventured to wonder if the unswerving rectitude that had elevated him
above the level of other men, in her esteem and affection, were so
glorious a thing after all; if a tempering, not of human frailty,
but of charity for the shortcomings, sympathy for the needs, of
ordinary mortals, would not subdue the effulgence of his talents and
virtues into mild lustre, more tolerable to the optics of fallible
beholders

Unsuspicious, with all his astuteness, of her sacrilegious doubts,
Winston proceeded:

"In the event of your marriage, you would desire, no doubt, that
Mrs. Sutton should take up her abode with you? You would find her
useful in many ways, and she would get on amicably with her
husband's godson."

"I do not think she expects to go with me," answered Mabel,
staggered by his coolly confident air. "I certainly have never
entertained the idea. I imagined that she would remain with you,
while you needed her services."

"That will not be long. I shall be married on the 10th of October."