Of course she did not say as much in so many words, but the unconscious excuse for what she knew an unprejudiced outsider would call her heartlessness went on presenting itself whenever she felt the beginning of a regret. Deeper even than that, and almost hidden in the sea of self-deception, and passion, and riotous love of life, lay the reef on which the ship of her happiness would some day go to pieces--the ultimate knowledge of the wrong she had done, and of her own cruelty to Marcantonio and weakness to herself.
But in Pesio the time came; terribly soon, she thought, though her suffering was only at its beginning. Each morning brought a dull sense of pain, that came in her dreams and became the terror of her waking. She knew before she opened her eyes that it was there, and the first returning consciousness was the certainty of sorrow. It soon wore away, it is true, but she grew to dread it as she had never dreaded anything in her short, luxurious life. It needed all her strength and energy to shake off the impression, and it required all Batiscombe's love and thoughtful care to make it seem possible to live the hours until the evening.
That was in the morning, in the brief moments when Leonora, like most of us, had not yet silenced her soul, and trodden it under for the day; and it spoke bitter truth and scorn to her, so that she could hardly bear it. Then, at last, she was honest. There was no more self-deception then, no more possibility of believing that she had done well in leaving all for Julius: she could no longer say that for so much love's sake it was right and noble to spurn away the world,--for the world came to mean her husband, her father and her mother, and she saw and knew too clearly what each and all of them must suffer. Their pale faces came to her in her dreams, and their sad voices spoke to her the reproach of all reproaches that can be uttered against a woman. Her husband she had never loved; but in spite of all her reasoning she knew that he had loved her, and she understood enough of his pride and single-hearted nobility to guess what he must suffer while she dragged his ancient name in the dust of dishonour. Her father was never to her mind, for he was a Philistine of the kind that have hard shells and very little that is soft or warm within them, but she knew that he had treasured her as the apple of his eye, and that his old heart would break for his daughter's shame. Her mother was a worldly woman, loving Leonora because she had obtained a success in society, and upbraiding her with never making the most of it; but Leonora knew how her mother's vanity must be bowed and trampled down by the deep disgrace, and that her vanity was almost all she had of happiness.