Thank you so much for all the alerts and reviews. I'm seriously touched. I'm behind on review replies again but I will catch up today. Sorry about that.

The other brains behind this venture are Sunflower Fran & Alice's White Rabbit, who lend their talents to editing this.
RobsmyyummyCabanaboy and Deh are my pre-readers, plot coaches, shoulders to cry on, you name it, they do it.

MILD WARNING: This chapter contains mentions of a couple sensitive topics. I don't want anyone to be triggered needlessly nor spoil the chapter for everyone else. So, if you are concerned it might be triggering for you, please jump to the end where I provide a more detailed (and SPOILERISH) warning. Nothing mentioned is graphic though.

We left our Mr Cullen on the cusp of a fraught conversation. Shall we get to it?

DISCLAIMER: I still don't own any of it.

CHAPTER 17

Emmett never beat about the bush. Ever. He had little patience for niceties, and if he wanted to know something, he'd ask outright, proprieties be damned—his reasoning being that the worst consequence he'd face would boil down to people telling him to mind his own business.

While his straightforward disposition sometimes made him few friends and definitely barred him from any diplomatic endeavours, his frankness equally endeared him to those who did have his friendship. It reminded me how unsurprising his brotherly closeness to Bella was. Both of them shunned any sort of duplicity or hypocrisy, which explained how bitter Emmett's former estrangement must have felt to Bella, all the more because she'd had no notion of what had caused it. Yet again, it was all in the past now.

Still, my brother's impromptu question had just thrown Jasper into a spell of utter befuddlement. Our polished friend appeared once again to be at a loss for words and limited in his reaction by the fact that he was in public and astride a horse, trotting down one of the busiest paths in Hyde Park. Not exactly a prime location for unburdening one's heart.

When Jasper failed to find his bearings for the third time, Emmett took pity on him. "Let's turn down that path over there, my fellow. I didn't mean to stun you into speechlessness."

Quite telling in itself was the fact that Emmett had stopped short of apologising to Jasper for his words. I wondered what he knew, or may have heard, or Alice had said about Lady Whitlock that could have spurred such a question without a preamble of any sort.

We trotted for a few minutes down a narrow path along which nobody else seemed to roam until it opened up into a secluded meadow where a stone bench sat forlorn under a massive, gnarly yew tree.

"You have every right to inquire about my mother, Emmett. I was dreading this would come to pass, but you and Edward are entitled to know her entire story. Alice too—I owe it to her and to you both, my friends, to be honest about this … wound that's been festering within my family for decades. None of it has been of my own making, but it's impacted the people closest to me—it imperilled my friendship with Bella in the past, drove her away from me into your family's waiting arms. I won't have it poisoning my relationship with Alice or leading her to refuse me. I could not bear it."

Jasper had begun with enough vigour, but after his initial outburst, he seemed to have lost steam.

"Get off that horse, my man, before your emotions overwhelm you. Bella—and Alice, for that matter—would not forgive us if we dared bring you home in less than the pristine condition in which we found you this morning," said Emmett at last.

We all dismounted and secured our horses before walking over to the stone bench, which offered the advantage of being sheltered in the shade. Quite a relief on a warm, sunny June morning in London. Jasper sat next to Emmett on the bench while I opted to vent my frustrations by pacing back and forth in front of them.

The issue of Lady Whitlock's lovely disposition had plagued my conscience for a while, especially now that Jasper was courting Alice. To her credit, she must have harboured the same doubts too, if she'd gone as far as asking him about her prospective mother-in-law.

I shuddered at the thought of the lady's behaviour on the one occasion I'd met her just as Jasper started speaking again.

"I don't know what you may have heard, Emmett, for you've never met my mother. Edward and Alice have, and I'll never cease being grateful for their understanding and gracious reaction to a most unpleasant circumstance. I still blame myself for that incident—I failed to properly deal with her. That is no matter now, I'm sure … but you'll think I'm rambling. Forgive me. It is a fraught subject to me."

The man had witnessed Emmett and me airing our literal dirty linen a few days ago, and now, ironically enough, he found himself in the same predicament. Sometimes, life truly had a way of slapping you in the face.

"Well, I believe we all know something about sore subjects here. How about you start from the beginning?" asked Emmett again with an understanding smile on his face. There was no hint of reproach or suspicion in his expression. He truly just wished to know—and so did I; the piece-meal information Bella had relayed wasn't nearly enough to paint a thorough picture of what promised to be quite a harrowing story.

"Bella must have told you something, Edward."

"Regardless, I'd rather hear it from you. Straight from the source. So far, I had no reason to ask or pry into your private concerns, but you asked for permission to court Alice. If your intentions are serious, then you must understand … she's our sister."

"I do understand. As I said, you all have a right to know. If Alice hadn't broached the subject herself, I would have come to you."

He looked frazzled, almost desperate now, as he flung his hat and gloves on the grass, paying no mind that they'd get stained and ruined.

"I believe you, my friend. You've always been straight with me. Perhaps, as Emmett suggested, it'd be best to start from the beginning?"

Jasper stared at me with those deep, hazel eyes of his that now looked stormier than the November skies in Cornwall. I nodded at him in encouragement, and he turned to Emmett, who gestured for him to take the floor, so to speak.

"My father was a conceited, cruel, and cold man. He had a loftier notion about his station in life than his circumstances warranted, and when the time came, he planned to marry accordingly. His eyes fell first on the youngest daughter of Lord Cuthbert Higginbotham, the Earl of Longwood. Only, the fair Renée would not have him. His riches and title did not matter to her, but he was determined to have the daughter of an earl, felt he was entitled to it, so he moved on to her older sister. Catherine, who had inherited none of her French mother's inclination for romance, was suitably swept off her economical feet by my father's land, wealth, and newly acquired title. Lord Garrett Whitlock, the devil take him, thought he'd met his match. Their combined elation was, alas, short-lived."

Emmett, who'd listened wide-eyed to Jasper's tale so far, interrupted him with a surprised huff. "Renée, you said?

"Yes, my astute friend. You guessed it, didn't you?"

If Emmett had guessed whatever it was Jasper alluded to, I hadn't and must have looked accordingly puzzled, so much so that my brother shot me an incredulous glance. "Well, I'll be damned. Your father was after Bella's mother at first?"

Jasper nodded, and for the first time this morning, cracked a smile. "Believe me, the irony has never been lost on me. But back to the sordid tale …"

"Wait," Emmett interrupted again. "When Bella came to live with us, she told me quite a bit about her family. Didn't her mother end up almost estranged from her family because they felt she'd married beneath her?"

It comported with what I'd heard from my mother when I first arrived back home. Bella's parents had appointed Esme and Carlisle as Bella's guardians to prevent her from falling into the clutches of her mother's own family.

"That was always my mother's notion. Bella's father had extensive property but no titles. The fact that he'd earned every penny he owned reeked of mercenary disgrace to my mother—and to my father too. No matter that half the rooms in the Higginbotham ancestral home were closed off because there was no money or staff to maintain them. So, while the younger sister—Bella's mother—married for love and ended up swimming in riches, the older sister—my mother—married for riches and ended up in a loveless marriage with a cold-hearted bastard who liked parading her around on his arm but otherwise paid her no heed.

"Things, if possible, got worse for my mother when she suffered three miscarriages in the space of two years. My father wanted—demanded—an heir to his domains, and he saw my mother's misfortunes as failures no less heinous than a personal affront. His baser, crueller instincts became the only way he channelled his rage and disappointment by knocking my mother about. It was never stated out loud, but there were whispers among the family that her third miscarriage had not been accidental at all."

By now, I was downright horrified. Bella had indeed used the word "cruel" to describe her deceased uncle, but I would not have fathomed him to be such an uncaring, abusive cad.

"When I was born, my father changed for a spell. By all accounts, he was fond of me as a child and acted kindly to my mother, who'd finally done her duty and produced an heir. As some miracle would have it, when I was three years old, Catherine conceived again—a little wisp of a girl she named Charlotte. Alas, darling Charlotte didn't live to be a year. Scarlet fever took her from us."

Sudden dread took hold of me. Whether one's children lived to adulthood was entirely a matter of chance, despite all the advancements in science we'd witnessed in the last few decades. For the first time, I pictured Bella and me in the same position—cruelly losing to illness a child we'd expected, wanted, and loved since it'd quickened in my Bella's womb. A wave of black despair washed over me—how would I, how would Bella react if that ever happened to us? How had Jasper's mother reacted? His father?

"My mother, who'd never had the sunniest disposition to begin with, plunged into fathomless desperation. She was inconsolable for months, refusing to leave the nursery where Charlotte's crib stood empty. To my father, Charlotte was only a girl while I was hale and hearty, untouched by the scarlet fever. He shrugged the whole thing off and went about his life as unconcerned as ever."

"Heavens above, Jasper. How did you bear it?"

Jasper exhaled a tortured sigh and looked at me to answer my question. "I'd just turned five years old. They told me Charlotte had gone to heaven, and that was the end of it. I cried out for my mama every night, but only the nurse ever came to find me. Harsher changes came later."

"How is it that your mother is so bitter towards Bella?"

"My aunt Renée embodied a host of things my mother loved to despise but secretly envied. First off, she'd always been regarded as an uncontested beauty with an endearing, affectionate personality. People took to my aunt naturally as if she brought sunshine wherever she went. She lacked any kind of conceit or affectation about her. Secondly, she'd married for love a man richer than Croesus but without titles, a man who fiercely loved her until the day he died and had no qualms about showing it to the world. Thirdly, she seemed to have conceived her one daughter without a speck of trouble. And yet … and yet, the more my mother berated her sister for her choices in life, the more she envied her, wrecked by jealousy and regret. My mother had fallen for outward charms, but where had that led her? Just to bitterness and isolation. She tried to bring Bella into her way of thinking while she was growing up, but you both know my cousin. It didn't matter to her that she'd been raised like a shopkeeper's daughter, as my mother scathingly used to say. Every time, Bella retorted she'd rather be a well-loved shopkeeper's daughter than the rancorous wife of an earl."

Fighting words perhaps but unsurprising to all who knew how outspoken Bella was.

"When my aunt passed, it got worse. My mother expected Bella to bow to her every wish and opinion, but my cousin denied her at every turn. Not that she didn't have a point—my mother all but demanded that Bella forget her parents ever existed, and soon after my aunt's death even wanted to force Bella into marrying someone of her choice. Bella wouldn't have it. As it turned out, your father arrived the next day to accompany her to Cullen Manor."

"Quite so, my friend. And knowing my Bella, I can picture her saying just that. If you don't mind me asking, why did you say earlier that … how did you phrase it? Yes, that you'd failed to deal with your mother on the one occasion Alice and I met her? How so?"

"I must go farther back in time to explain that, so please bear with me. When it became clear my mother wouldn't conceive again, my father lost all interest in her except for his keenness on taking his frustrations out on her. He became increasingly violent over the years, even causing her to tumble down the stairs on a few occasions. His preference would have been to have her committed, but he wouldn't lock her up in an asylum because of the stain of disrepute that would tarnish the family's good name. Instead, he confined her in her own home, banishing her to a set of rooms she wasn't allowed to escape, with no diversions, no company, and a stalwart maid who had instructions to keep her quiet and restrained. I hardly ever saw her before I was sent away to school, and even less so thereafter.

"Almost six years ago, after I'd left university, my uncle and aunt died within a few months of each other. I went to see Bella and begged her to come home with me to Whitlock Hall. She refused. Then, with much prodding, I found out why. While my grandfather the earl had lived, my father kept up appearances with Bella's side of the family, asking her to visit a few times a year. Bella quickly suspected something sinister was afoot at Whitlock Hall when my father provided evasive answers every time she asked about my mother. One day, Bella climbed the stairs to the set of rooms that had become my mother's prison. After having been starved for company for years, however, my mother had become quite unaccustomed to it, and instead of welcoming Bella, she mistook her niece for her dead sister and attacked her savagely. Bella, while understanding of my mother's plight, packed her bags and left the same day. Once she had arrived back home, her father extracted the entire story out of her. My uncle was furious. He rode to Whitlock Hall and gave my father a piece of his mind, accused him of being a tyrant, fit only for the stocks. I believe that was the day Bella's parents decided the Cullens would be best suited to act as guardians to their daughter."

This explained Bella's attitude toward her aunt—and also filled me with dread at the prospect of Alice living under the same roof as that woman.

"If I may ask, what happened when your father passed away?"

"When I became of age, I tried to reason with my father and get more involved in caring for my mother. I talked to her doctors. I visited and sat with her every time I went to Whitlock Hall. But she'd been confined within four walls for too long and, as I said, had been a morose woman to begin with. She could not see past her tragedies. She lashed out at everybody, me included. Slowly, I began to understand Bella's parents had been right in keeping her away. What sort of life could Bella have led at Whitlock Hall, without guidance, without affection? No, she'd been better off in Cornwall. I missed her, surely, but I wasn't naïve enough to think that my mother's darkness wouldn't have touched her if she'd been close enough."

There was one thing to Jasper's great credit—he certainly wasn't holding back any details. Between the information Bella had relayed to me, my own observations, and now Jasper's narrative, I'd pieced together most of the entire distasteful story.

Lady Whitlock had experienced many misfortunes in life—an unhappy marriage to an otherwise eligible prospect, miscarriages, a child dead in infancy, an abusive husband, a descent into despair and near-madness—but most were hardly atypical of her station in her life, or of life in general. While I empathised with her on a human level, rationally I could not. For all I'd seen, the cause of her attitude seemed to go well past the aftermath of her tribulations—and therein lay the real problem. Lady Whitlock, it seemed, had clung to her conceited notions and imbued them with her own increasing bitterness about life, instead of recognising that there existed more than one way of going about things. The worst of it lay in her insistence in forcing her views and wishes on other people—namely, on my Bella. Instead of consoling a bereaved niece, offering her guidance and the comfort of her loved ones, she'd meant to arrange a no doubt socially advantageous match for which Bella could have had no appetite in her mourning state. To me, that reeked of a mercenary, merciless disposition—which comported all too well with her spiteful behaviour that morning she'd intruded on our breakfast.

While our adversities might not always be of our own making, it is entirely our choice what to do with them and how to react. Lady Whitlock had chosen to shun the affection of the few family members who did care about her, to take a revenge of sorts on the world that had been so unfair to her. I wasn't quite sure how it had worked out for her eventually.

"In any case," continued Jasper, breaking through my own musings, "when my father passed, I was determined to break her free of her prison, so to speak. Not all of my attempts worked. Some doctors steadfastly refused to treat her, saying she'd never fit back into regular society, and I had to resign myself—she'd be off to Bedlam before long. But with the right doctors, and a more caring nurse who's less prone to stun her charge into oblivion by plying her with gin, we've been trying to gradually get her out of those four walls. We've had some results."

"Some?" Emmett sounded rightly incredulous.

"I still don't believe she's fit to mingle or have an independent life. I doubt she ever will be, which is why I said I failed to deal with her a few weeks ago. She has a small establishment in a cottage on Whitlock Hall grounds. She's not allowed to visit, or receive guests I haven't approved if I can't be there as well, and I check on her personally every fortnight. As a rule, there is no way for her to be able to make it out of the house, let alone as far as London. But that day, she did. A new nurse was left alone to care for her by some mistake, and my mother hoodwinked the poor girl into dressing her in her best finery and getting her carriage ready so she could meet with me at the main house—and that is how she came to invade Bella's parlour that fateful morning."

"How do we know Alice will be safe at Whitlock Hall? Will she be expected to take over her care in any meaningful way?"

This time, Jasper was too agitated to sit still and stood to join me. "If I am ever so blessed to call Alice my wife, she will not be involved with that. Absolutely not. I will do my utmost to ensure her safety, and that includes sending my mother farther away should she become intractable. I will keep supervising her care. Alice will not even need to see her."

He'd thought about this long and hard. While I remained leery of the lady herself, I trusted Jasper. If he harboured for Alice half the regard I had for Bella, he'd keep her safe and far away from Lady Whitlock.

"Fair enough, my friend. I believe you. I'll trust you to relay the same information you just shared with us to Alice herself."

"I will," he said after exhaling a deep sigh of relief. The deep frown that had marred his features was gone, and he looked about five years younger, as if a burden had been lifted off his shoulders. "Thank you, my friends, for believing me."

Now I understood what Bella had meant about secrets ruining families. I also understood Jasper's determination that Bella be free to marry whomever she chose and for love, if that's what she wanted. I also understood his own procrastination in finding himself a bride—after what had happened to his parents, it was no small wonder the man would be wary of marriage.

I offered him my hand, and he shook it firmly. He regarded me with such an awed, grateful look that I thought I might be gaining far more than a lifelong friend in him. He'd soon become another brother to me.

A week or so later, after the grand party Rosalie's parents had been so gracious to throw for Bella and me, I took stock of my status in life as I prepared to travel back to Cornwall with the rest of our party.

I was a year older, engaged to be married, no longer in a bitter dispute with my brother, and the de facto head of my remaining family. In the ladies' expert estimation, the combined engagement and birthday celebration had been a smashing success and would be the talk of the town for the waning days of the Season before the rest of the ton decamped to the country for less august, more bucolic pursuits. There had been no disagreeable incidents, except for the sudden appearance of the Duke of Bolingbroke, who'd showed up without an invitation, presuming on his long acquaintance with the Hales. For a minute, Jasper, Emmett, and I had feared Lord Blackwood would dare show his face, but a few well-aimed words at his mother from Mrs Hale had apparently kept him away.

Before the party, we'd decided together as a family—it felt at the same time foreign and exciting to phrase it in such a manner—that we'd leave for Cornwall two days thereafter. We no longer had any reason to linger in town. Jasper had agreed to follow us back to Cullen Manor and had enlisted Lady Holcombe as a general chaperone to watch over the betrothed and courting couples, much to the delight of said lady.

The plan was to travel back to Cullen Manor at a leisurely pace and break our journey at Bella's property in south Somerset since it conveniently lay about halfway between London and our final destination. Because both Jasper and Bella had their own carriages in London, they'd also proposed foregoing the stagecoach, to the utter relief of the ladies, who did not look forward to travelling in a cramped cab for more than two hundred miles.

And so it was that four days after our engagement party in London, Bella and I found ourselves sitting in a carriage with my brother and his wife, Lady Holcombe having taken it upon herself to travel in Jasper's carriage with Alice and her nephew, to said nephew's utter discomfort.

I'd been hiding my face behind a copy of the Times while the ladies kept up a steady stream of conversation. As a matter of fact, Rosalie did most of the conversing while Bella answered here and there. The topic of the day seemed to be the female guests' chosen fashion at the party, and Rosalie had far more enthusiasm for finery than Bella did, which was completely unsurprising to me. Bella had lit up the entire ballroom with an emerald green gown I'd never seen on her, and Rosalie was passing on all the compliments she'd heard from the other ladies in attendance.

"That colour looked marvellous on you, Bella. Your complexion glowed in the candlelight. And it complimented dear Edward's eyes so well. What is it that my mother said? Oh, yes, I have it now. You looked scintillating. That's the word she used."

Bella thanked her quickly but sounded uncomfortable under such heaps of praise. She didn't like being the centre of attention but, in fairness to Rosalie, my intended had truly dimmed the lights upon appearing in that ballroom. Even now, I couldn't suppress the burst of pride and love surging in my chest when I thought about it. I cleared my throat to dispel the thoughts conjured up by the less gentlemanly side of me and lowered the newspaper to participate in the conversation.

"She's right, Bella. You outshone every other lady present, and I don't mean any offense to our fair Rosalie here either. Just that everyone else paled in comparison to you."

She patted my forearm indulgently before answering. "You, Mr Cullen, are a shameless flatterer, but I'll graciously take the compliment, and thank you for it. Now, enough about my looks. Aren't you all excited to be going home at last?"

Emmett chuckled at her attempt to steer our discourse away from what she doubtlessly deemed treacherous territory. "And you, my dear sister, are still the humblest person I know. Our Edward here looked as proud as a peacock when he led you through your many sets of dances together. How many was it, four? Even good old Lady Holcombe tut-tutted at you, brother. She said you were monopolising the guest of honour."

"I'm sure Aunt Millie meant it in jest. You know she has little patience for these conventions whenever she can help it," replied Bella with an amused smile.

"Well, I was a guest of honour too," I protested.

"If you say so," retorted my brother with a mischievous smirk.

His wife's interruption prevented him from having further diversions at my expense. "Bella, how will you manage with wedding clothes and such now we're leaving London? Did you place any orders before we left?"

My Bella stifled a yawn behind her gloved hand before answering Rosalie's inquiry. "There are perfectly capable tradesmen in Truro, whom I know and respect. I'd rather bestow my custom on them than brave the crowds and gossip in London every time I walk into a milliner's or seamstress's shop."

Rosalie seemed quite puzzled by Bella's reasoning, to the point she couldn't find a suitable response for a moment or two. When she began, she sounded, for lack of a better word, tentative. "Oh … I never considered … that. I thought you'd wish to … secure the best?" she asked with a small voice.

I had no idea how often Bella and Rosalie might have been thrown together before my father had banished contact with the Hales, which meant I couldn't gauge how comfortable or how friendly they were with each other. One thing seemed crystal clear to me—Rosalie was a sweet-tempered, if at times shy, young lady, but one whose pursuits, likes, and dislikes were conventional enough. Reminiscing about one of my first glimpses of Bella at Cullen Manor, I thought Rosalie Cullen wouldn't be caught dead on a rickety stepladder in her garden pruning a tree when she employed gardeners who could do it without any inconvenience to her or her finery. Bella's considerations about avoiding gossip and social exposure to the ton probably flew over Rosalie's head; if her parents had a penchant for social advancement, it was quite possible she'd been taught to court attention since her first season rather than shun it. On the other hand, Bella, with her fierce independence, her dedication to other people, and impatience with outward social pleasantries that belied an utter lack of genuine sentiments, would no doubt prove mystifying to Rosalie.

"I will secure the best of what I need, and I can do that perfectly well in Truro in one afternoon, and then drive back to Cullen Manor in time for tea. I don't relish London crowds that much, to be quite honest. Too many high society ladies end up asking too many questions I have no desire to answer."

Emmett reacted to Bella's statement with a wry smile. "Now that, my dear Bella, is a sight I'd pay good money to see: you putting the noses of those pretentious ladies out of joint."

"Do not be inappropriate, Emmett," Rosalie hissed at him.

Bella eased her concerns with a laugh of her own. "Of course, you would. But it wouldn't make my cousin happy, I reckon."

"Forgive my husband, Bella. Sometimes, he doesn't know when silence is the best policy," added Rosalie, still quite ill at ease after Bella and Emmett's exchange.

"There is nothing to forgive," answered Bella with a friendly pat to Rosalie's hand. "We both know we were speaking in jest."

Rosalie nodded and seemed to recover her composure after a few deep breaths. "I wish we could have taken the train. It would have been quite an adventure, wouldn't it?"

"The railway is still under construction, my dear." There had been talk of travelling by railway at least part of the way, but Lady Holcombe had quashed the motion due to her distrust of the modern conveyance.

"How far are we from our destination?" asked Rosalie again.

"Truro or our intermediate stop, my dear?" asked Emmett for clarification.

"Bella's estate. You did tell me its name …"

"Cygnus Court," Bella said. "A rather lofty play on words on our family name. My father's idea—it became a family joke in the long run. Let's see … what's the last post inn we passed?"

"Sherborne, I believe. We shouldn't be far away now, should we, my love?"

Bella turned to me and graced me with one of those smiles of hers that warmed my heart. "No, Edward. We're less than ten miles away."

"About another hour or so then," said Emmett.

No more words passed among us for some time until the carriage turned down a sloping lane flanked by rows of well-shaped yew trees. A majestic residence stood at the bottom of the lane, its Elizabethan façade an ornate tapestry interwoven with tall, mullioned glass windows. A distinctly Tudor-shaped arch framed its front door.

When the carriage stopped right outside, Bella sat a little straighter, smiled at us, and then motioned with her hand to the carriage window. A line of servants stood by the door, ready to greet their mistress.

"Welcome to Cygnus Court, my friends."

TRIGGER WARNING: the chapter contains mild references to miscarriage, domestic abuse, and mental illness.

A/N: if you made it this far, thank you. And now we know what the heck was up with Lady Whitlock the entire time. Let us bear in mind that even state-of-the-art medicine had very warped, incorrect, and frankly abusive methods for the diagnosis and treatment of mental health in Victorian times. The Bedlam was not a place where you'd want to willingly confine a loved one. It was a hellhole. Patients were treated horribly and considered less than human because of the huge social stigma on mental health. Compound that with the fact that the upper crust would never expose what they'd deem a "failure" such as mental health and you find yourself with the perfect "madwoman in the attic" cocktail (from Jane Eyre, remember?). Divorce at the time was granted only in a very limited number of cases, most often to husbands and hardly ever to abused wives, and at this point in time (1840) it required an act of Parliament. Divorce Court comes on the scene in 1857 and even then insanity is not deemed grounds for divorce (likewise, Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre cannot divorce Bertha because she is declared insane). Mind you, it takes until 1937 for insanity to be considered grounds for divorce in the United Kingdom (if you watched Downton Abbey, you will remember Lady Edith and her beau battling with this very issue at one point).
All in all... Lady Whitlock initially made choices fueled by self-importance and social standing, and was later dealt a horrible hand. Was she entirely, completely mentally ill? There's the rub. To Victorians, whose medical practices were steeped in misogyny, women were "hysterical" in a number of situations which would go from mild depression, to allergy-related headaches, postpartum depression, endometriosis... Women's healthcare in Victorian times, in one word, was a MESS. So if we compound Lady Whitlock's initial disposition, what happened to her later, and how she was treated... Yeah, that could drive anyone to the brink. But she also rebuffed any kindness she received, both from Bella and from Jasper. For his part, Jasper was also dealt a horrible hand, and tried to do the compassionate, caring thing for his mother with the means available to him at the time.

Talk to me, people! See you next week. We are exactly five chapters away from the end now.