In that letter from London, a letter dictated by the companion of her flight, she said nothing about him, nothing about marriage. It was therefore plain to the mother that the daughter was not married. So the mother cast the image of her daughter out of her heart, and shut up her heart against her child for ever. All through her widowhood this girl had been the sole source of her secret love and happiness, as far as worldly things were allowed to count in the love and happiness of one who ruled herself by the rule of duty.
Now that child had become the only source of secret and open reproach to her. Soon after she got that letter everyone in the city knew all about her misfortune, and the neighbours turned up their eyes and held aloft their hands in virtuous shame. Her daughter had disgraced her home, had disgraced the sacred order to which she might be said to belong, had disgraced the city which had given her birth. Into the mother's heart the image of the daughter should come no more. Across the mother's threshold the foot of the daughter should never pass. It was hard to keep the image out always; but no sooner did it gain an entrance than she cast it forth with bitter reproaches against herself for her sinful weakness in holding commune with the only thing which had ever brought shame to her.
The mother made no steps to follow the daughter. Several people came and offered help. She wanted no help. Her daughter had taken her fate into her own hands, and there matters should rest. She was inflexible. Nothing could move her in the least way.
Clergymen who had been friends of her husband called and expostulated, and said that it was wrong and sinful of her not to do something to win back the fugitive. But she would not listen to them with patience. She told them she had done her duty by the girl, and the girl had taken herself off, and she, the mother, could not think of receiving her daughter back. They then told her this was not a Christian spirit, and that she must remember the story of the poor Prodigal. And, upon this, she grew angry with them, for it hurt her beyond endurance to hear her daughter, her only child, referred to in such a way. She told them she knew her duty as a Christian as well as anyone, that they ought to be aware she had been under good guidance, the guidance of her husband, for many years, and that she was much obliged to them, but that her mind was made up beyond the chance of change.