A Lady of Rome by F. Marion Crawford

Nothing happened during the next week; nothing, that is to say, which can be chronicled as an event. But the determination which Maria had formed after her chance meeting with Castiglione gained strength continually. She went to confession at last, and it was a bitter satisfaction to be told that she was in mortal sin because she had whispered those few loving words in the weakness of an instant; she was reminded that if the mere wish to kill was almost as bad as the intention, and that the intention was murder and nothing else, it followed that the most passing wish to be united with any man but her husband was a betrayal of her marriage vow only a little less grave than the worst. She replied that she knew it was. She was warned that she must uproot from her heart every memory of the man she had loved, if she hoped to be forgiven. She bowed her head and answered that she wished with all her soul to do so, and was trying with all her might to succeed.

She had gone once more to the terrible old Capuchin, because she knew what he would say, and wished to hear him say it. Though the name of Padre Bonaventura was known to her and to many, he did not know her and had never seen her face; it was before God that she accused herself and abased herself, and promised to do better, and most earnestly prayed for help. The monk remembered her without knowing who she was, and before he pronounced the absolution she implored, he said what he believed it his duty to say. It was a short, harsh homily on the abominable wickedness of the rich and great, who were so much better taught and so much more carefully brought up than the poor and the ignorant, and therefore so much the more responsible for their thoughts and actions. The sin of the noble lady was a thousand times greater than the fault of the unlettered hill-woman. Why should a lady of Rome expect to be forgiven more easily than a peasant?