. . She
stopped in painful awareness of the possessive pronoun. Mark was
unresponsive, until there came the news from Africa, which made him
throw his arms about his mother's neck while she was still alive. Mrs.
Lidderdale, whatever bitterness she may once have felt for the ruin of
her married life, shed fresh tears of sorrow for her husband, and
supposing that Mark's embrace was the expression of his sympathy wept
more, as people will when others are sorry for them, and then still more
because the future for Mark seemed hopeless. How was she to educate him?
How clothe him? How feed him even? At her age where and how could she
earn money? She reproached herself with having been too ready out of
sensitiveness to sacrifice Mark to her own pride. She had had no right
to leave her husband and live in the country like this. She should have
repressed her own emotion and thought only of the family life, to the
maintenance of which by her marriage she had committed herself. At first
it had seemed the best thing for Mark; but she should have remembered
that her father could not live for ever and that one day she would have
to face the problem of life without his help and his hospitality. She
began to imagine that the disaster of that stormy night had been
contrived by God to punish her, and she prayed to Him that her
chastisement should not be increased, that at least her son might be
spared to her.
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