Alone on a Wide Sea, Volume III

The time passed, and now I was to prepare myself to receive my husband. My mind had been so wholly engrossed by my sister that I had given but little thought to the interview that was likely to happen that day, if it were true, as Mary had said, that my husband would come to Newcastle.

It was not my fault, but the fault of my having been born a woman -- of my being human, in short -- that, whilst I thought of my husband's arrival, I should find myself looking into the glass and comparing my face with my sister's. Never had I seen her so sweet, so lovely, indeed, as when I beheld her in the road when my little boy came running to me. How different was my face from hers! And yet, if he loved me, if his love for my memory was as deep as my sister had declared it in her letter, surely my face could not signify. Had I found him shorn of his youth, maimed, ravaged by disaster, it would not have mattered, I should but have loved him the more.