She pitied herself with an exceeding pity when she thought
of all the hardships which she had endured. Left an early widow,
persecuted by her husband's family, twice robbed, spied upon by her own
servants, unappreciated by the world at large, ill-used by three lovers,
victimised by her selected friend, Mrs. Carbuncle, and now driven out of
society because she had lost her diamonds, was she not more cruelly
treated than any woman of whom she had ever read or heard? But she was not
going to give up the battle, even now. She still had her income, and she
had great faith in income. And though she knew that she had been
grievously wounded by the fowlers, she believed that time would heal her
wounds. The world would not continue to turn its back altogether upon a
woman with four thousand pounds a year, because she had told a fib about
her necklace. She weighed all this; but the conviction strongest upon her
mind was the necessity that she should have a husband. She felt that a
woman by herself in the world can do nothing, and that an unmarried
woman's strength lies only in the expectation that she may soon be
married. To her it was essentially necessary that she should have the
protection of a husband who might endure on her behalf some portion of
those buffetings to which she seemed to be especially doomed.
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