That
was on the surface. Inwardly, the differences were more marked. Even in
the mental attitude they adopted towards what had happened, husband and
wife were thoroughly dissimilar. Mary did not refer to it because she
thought it would be foolish to re-open so disagreeable a subject. In her
own mind, however, she faced it frankly, dating back to it as the night
when Purdy had been so odious and Richard so angry. Mahony, on the other
hand, gave the affair a wide berth even in thought. For him it was a
kind of Pandora's box, of which, having once caught a glimpse of the
contents, he did not again dare to raise the lid. Things might escape
from it that would alter his whole life. But he, too, dated from it in
the sense of suddenly becoming aware, with a throb of regret, that he
had left his youth behind him. And such phrases as: "When I was young,"
"In my younger days," now fell instinctively from his lips.
Nor was this all. Deep down in Mary's soul there slumbered a slight
embarrassment; one she could not get the better of: it spread and grew.
This was a faint, ever so faint a doubt of Richard's wisdom. Odd she had
long known him to be, different in many small and some great ways from
those they lived amongst; but hitherto this very oddness of his had
seemed to her an outgrowth on the side of superiority--fairer judgment,
higher motives. Just as she had always looked up to him as rectitude in
person, so she had thought him the embodiment of a fine, though somewhat
unworldly wisdom.
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