She was, indeed, genuinely shocked.

That a young lady of Hesper's birth and position should talk like this, actually objecting to a man as her husband because she recoiled from his wickedness, of which she was not to be supposed to know, or to be capable of understanding, anything, was a thing unheard of in her world-a thing unmaidenly in the extreme! What innocent girl would or could or dared allude to such matters?
She had no right to know an atom about them! "You are a married woman, mamma," returned Hesper, "and therefore must know a great many things I neither know nor wish to know.

For anything I know, you may be ever so much a better woman than I, for having learned not to mind things that are a horror to me.

But there was a time when you shrunk from them as I do now.

I appeal to you as a woman: for God's sake, save me from marrying that wretch!" She spoke in a tone inconsistently calm.
"Girl! is it possible you dare to call the man, whom your father and I have chosen for your husband, a wretch!" "Is he not a wretch, mamma ?" "If he were, how should I know it?
What has any lady got to do with a man's secrets ?" "Not if he wants to marry her daughter ?" "Certainly not.