Elizabeth had fully released him from every obligation, but at the
same time she had declared that her whole life would be consecrated
to his memory. Richard felt that the release was just as nominal in
his own case. He knew that he never could love any woman but Elizabeth
Hallam, and that just as long as she loved him, she held him by ties
no words could annul. But he accepted her dictum; and the very fullness
of his heart, and the very extremity of his disappointment, deprived
him of the power to express his true feelings. His letter to Elizabeth
was colder and prouder than he meant it to be; and had that sorrowfully
resentful air about it which a child wears who is unjustly punished
and yet knows not how to defend himself.
It came to Elizabeth after a day of extreme humiliation--the day on
which she called her household servants together and dismissed them.
She had been able to give them no reason for her action, but a
necessity for economy, and to soften the dismissal by no gift.
Adversity flatters no one, and not a soul expressed any grief at the
sundering of the tie. She was even conscious, as she had frequently
been since Antony's failure, of an air, that deeply offended her--a
familiarity that was not a friendly one--the covert presumption of
the mean-hearted toward their unfortunate superiors.
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