What did that mean?
Is her mother so contemptible that my change of fortune leads her to treat me in that way ?' 'But does no other reason occur to you ?' asked Mr.Wyvern, with grave surprise.
'Other reason! What other ?' 'You must remember that gossip is active.' 'You mean that they have heard abou-- ?' 'Somehow it had become the common talk of the village very shortly after my arrival here.' Hubert dropped his eyes in bewilderment.
'Then they think me unfit to associate with them?
She--Adela will look upon me as a vile creature! But it wasn't so when I saw her immediately after my illness.

She talked freely and with just the same friendliness as before.' 'Probably she had heard nothing then.' 'And her mother only began to poison her mind when it was advantageous to do so ?' Hubert laughed bitterly.
'Well, there is an end of it,' he pursued.

'Yes, I was forgetting all that.

Oh, it is quite intelligible; I don't blame them.

By all means let her be preserved from contagion! Pooh! I don't know my own mind.
Old fancies that I used to have somehow got hold of me again If I ever marry, it must be a woman of the world, a woman with brain and heart to judge human nature.