CHAPTER XXV
Mr Frank Palmer was back again in England. He was much distressed
when he received that last letter from Mrs Caffyn, and discovered
that Madge's resolution not to write remained unshaken. He was
really distressed, but he was not the man upon whom an event, however
deeply felt at the time, could score a furrow which could not be
obliterated. If he had been a dramatic personage, what had happened
to him would have been the second act leading to a fifth, in which
the Fates would have appeared, but life seldom arranges itself in
proper poetic form. A man determines that he must marry; he makes
the shop-girl an allowance, never sees her or her child again,
transforms himself into a model husband, is beloved by his wife and
family; the woman whom he kissed as he will never kiss his lawful
partner, withdraws completely, and nothing happens to him.
Frank was sure he could never love anybody as he had loved Madge, nor
could he cut indifferently that other cord which bound him to her.
Nobody in society expects the same paternal love for the offspring of
a housemaid or a sempstress as for the child of the stockbroker's or
brewer's daughter, and nobody expects the same obligations, but Frank
was not a society youth, and Madge was his equal. A score of times,
when his fancy roved, the rope checked him as suddenly as if it were
the lasso of a South American Gaucho.
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