She had no right to be angry with Ratcliffe.

He had never deceived her.
He had always openly enough avowed that he knew no code of morals in politics; that if virtue did not answer his purpose he used vice.

How could she blame him for acts which he had repeatedly defended in her presence and with her tacit assent, on principles that warranted this or any other villainy?
The worst was that this discovery had come on her as a blow, not as a reprieve from execution.

At this thought she became furious with herself.
She had not known the recesses of her own heart.

She had honestly supposed that Sybil's interests and Sybil's happiness were forcing her to an act of self-sacrifice; and now she saw that in the depths of her soul very different motives had been at work: ambition, thirst for power, restless eagerness to meddle in what did not concern her, blind longing to escape from the torture of watching other women with full lives and satisfied instincts, while her own life was hungry and sad.
For a time she had actually, unconscious as she was of the delusion, hugged a hope that a new field of usefulness was open to her; that great opportunities for doing good were to supply the aching emptiness of that good which had been taken away; and that here at last was an object for which there would be almost a pleasure in squandering the rest of existence even if she knew in advance that the experiment would fail.
Life was emptier than ever now that this dream was over.