Unworthy heroine

I was very disappointed in this offering by Ms. Cornick. Not only is the progress of the tale tediously slow, I found the character of the heroine to be hard, dishonest — for no good reason — and actually cruel. She repeatedly lies to the man she supposedly loves — and has loved for 4 years and bore a child by. When she supposedly can no longer keep the truth from him after his has encountered the child and recognized her to be his own child, she says that she did not actively try to keep him from seeing the child — and thus, recognizing her as his own — but earlier in the book she says to herself that she must keep him from catching sight of the child. She repeatedly bemoans to herself the lies and dishonesty that keeps them apart, but does nothing to rectify the situation when it is her lies and dishonesty.

She is portrayed as a woman who cares deeply about others, especially those she cares about, but intentionally kept the child from its father not only while her former husband was alive, but even after his death — admitting that the child’s father was. Or the type of man to inflict harm on the child by making public the child’s actual parentage.

Dexter Anstruther definitely deserved a woman with far greater integrity to love.