Why?
Comparing Mrs.Linley's prospects with hers, was there anything to justify regret for the divorced wife?
She had her sweet little child to make her happy; she had a fortune of her own to lift her above sordid cares; she was still handsome, still a woman to be admired.

While she held her place in the world as high as ever, what was the prospect before Sydney Westerfield?
The miserable sinner would end as she had deserved to end.

Absolutely dependent on a man who was at that moment perhaps lamenting the wife whom he had deserted and lost, how long would it be before she found herself an outcast, without a friend to help her--with a reputation hopelessly lost--face to face with the temptation to drown herself or poison herself, as other women had drowned themselves or poisoned themselves, when the brightest future before them was rest in death?
If she had been a few years older, Herbert Linley might never again have seen her a living creature.

But she was too young to follow any train of repellent thought persistently to its end.

The man she had guiltily (and yet how naturally) loved was lord and master in her heart, doubt him as she might.