Though to her mother so sublimely forbearing, in her heart she knew too well the bitterness of revolt against nature’s cruelty; her own causes of suffering became almost insignificant in her view of the tragedy of life.  Was not this calamity upon her surviving parent again a result of her own action?  Was it possible to avoid a comparison between this blasted home and the appearance it might at this moment have presented if she had sacrificed herself?  What crime had she ever been guilty of that such expiation could be demanded of her?  She mocked at her misery for so questioning; as if causes and effects were to be thus discerned in fate’s dealings.  Emily had never known the phase of faith which finds comfort in the confession of native corruptness, nor did the desolation of her life guide her into that orthodox form of pessimism.  She was not conscious of impurity, and her healthy human intelligence could only see injustice in the woe that had befallen her.  From her childhood up she had striven towards the light, had loved all that is beautiful, had worshipped righteousness; out of this had it issued that her life was sunk in woe unfathomable, hopeless of rescue for ever.  She was the sacrifice of others’ wrong-doing; the evil-heartedness of one man, the thoughtless error of another, had brought this upon her.

Her character, like the elemental forces of earth, converted to beneficent energy the burden of corruption thrust upon it.  Active at first because she dreaded the self-communings of idleness, she found in her labour and her endurance sources of stern inspiration; her indestructible idealism grasped at the core of spiritual beauty in a life even such as this.  She did not reason with herself hysterically of evil passions to be purified by asceticism, of mysterious iniquities to be washed out in her very life’s blood; but the great principles of devotion and renunciation became soothing and exalting presences, before which the details of her daily task lost their toilsome or revolting aspect in a hallowed purpose.  Her work was a work of piety, not only to the living, but to the beloved dead.  If her father could know of what she was now doing, he would be comforted by it; if he knew that she did it for his sake it would bring him happiness.  This truth she saw:  that though life be stripped of every outward charm there may yet remain in the heart of it, like a glorious light, that which is the source of all beauty—­Love.  She strove to make Love the essence of her being.  Her mother, whom it was so hard to cherish for her own sake, she would and could love because her father had done so; that father, whose only existence now was in her own, she loved with fervour which seemed to grow daily.  Supreme, fostered by these other affections, exalted by the absence of a single hope for self, reigned the first and last love of her woman-soul.  Every hard task achieved for love’s sake rendered her in thought more worthy of him whom she made the ideal man.  He would never know of the passion which she perfected to be her eternal support; but, as there is a sense of sweetness in the thought that we may be held dear by some who can neither come near us nor make known to us their good-will, so did it seem to Emily that from her love would go forth a secret influence, and that Wilfrid, all unknowing, would be blest by her faithfulness.