As to the squire and his wife, they lived together just as before. I
do not think, that, excepting the four persons concerned, anybody
ever heard a syllable about the affair, save myself a long while
afterwards. Clem, however, packed up and left the town, after
selling his business. He had a reputation for restlessness; and his
departure, although it was sudden, was no surprise. He betook
himself to Australia, his wife going with him. I heard that they had
gone, and heard also that he was tired of school-keeping in England,
and had determined to try his fortune in another part of the world.
Our friendship had dwindled to nothing, and I thought no more about
him. Mrs. Butts never uttered one word of reproach to her husband.
I cannot say that she loved him as she could have loved, but she had
accepted him, and she said to herself that as perhaps it was through
her lack of sympathy with him that he had strayed, it was her duty
more and more to draw him to herself. She had a divine disposition,
not infrequent amongst women, to seek in herself the reason for any
wrong which was done to her. That almost instinctive tendency in
men, to excuse, to transfer blame to others, to be angry with
somebody else when they suffer from the consequences of their own
misdeeds, in her did not exist.
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