Larkyn, had
established his guilt.
He was a bad, wicked, gray-haired profligate. This may sound too sudden a
revulsion for a long-wedded wife; but it is a venerable fact that, if a man or
woman makes a practice of, and takes a delight in, believing and spreading
evil of people indifferent to him or her, he or she will end in believing evil
of folk very near and dear. You may think, also, that the mere incident of the
watch was too small and trivial to raise this misunderstanding. It is another
aged fact that, in life as well as racing, all the worst accidents happen at
little ditches and cut-down fences. In the same way, you sometimes see a woman
who would have made a Joan of Arc in another century and climate, threshing
herself to pieces over all the mean worry of housekeeping. But that is another
story.
Her belief only made the Colonel's Wife more wretched, because it insisted so
strongly on the villainy of men. Remembering what she had done, it was
pleasant to watch her unhappiness, and the penny-farthing attempts she made to
hide it from the Station. But the Station knew and laughed heartlessly; for
they had heard the story of the watch, with much dramatic gesture, from Mrs.
Larkyn's lips.
Once or twice Platte said to Mrs.
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