Mrs. Tramore had striven to extract from this accident something of
the austerity of widowhood; but her mourning only made her deviation
more public, she was a widow whose husband was awkwardly alive. She
had not prowled about the Continent on the classic lines; she had
come back to London to take her chance. But London would give her no
chance, would have nothing to say to her; as many persons had
remarked, you could never tell how London would behave. It would not
receive Mrs. Tramore again on any terms, and when she was spoken of,
which now was not often, it was inveterately said of her that she
went nowhere. Apparently she had not the qualities for which London
compounds; though in the cases in which it does compound you may
often wonder what these qualities are. She had not at any rate been
successful: her lover was dead, her husband was liked and her
children were pitied, for in payment for a topic London will
parenthetically pity. It was thought interesting and magnanimous
that Charles Tramore had not married again. The disadvantage to his
children of the miserable story was thus left uncorrected, and this,
rather oddly, was counted as HIS sacrifice.
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