“Mr. McAlpin was a good man and a gentleman, Captain Ranger,” interrupted Mrs. Benson.
“Yes, mamma; he was always ‘good.’ He never whipped his wife; he gave her everything that money could buy. There is no reason that the law can recognize for me to be dissatisfied. But I don’t belong primarily to myself, and I don’t like it. Mamma here, with her ideas of woman’s place in life, would have made him an excellent and happy wife.”
“He was always a gentleman, Daphne,” repeated her mother. “Don’t do him an injustice.”
“Yes; and I was his personal and private property. I was a beautiful animal, as he thought, to bedeck with his trinkets and show off his wealth; but I was nobody on my own account. I was simply his echo,—or supposed to be,—and nothing else.”
“Daphne, you forget that this carriage, these horses, our wagons and oxen, and the supplies for this journey are all the product of his bounty.”
“They are the product of my jewels, Captain. This outfit is mine; it was bought with my own heart’s blood! I owe nothing to Donald McAlpin.”
“Do you think you have dealt justly by your husband?” asked the Captain. There was reproof and impatience in his tone.
“I owe him nothing, sir. I am in the same line with Dugs,—a runaway chattel. That is all.”
“But Dugs, whose name now is Susannah, did not enter into her bargain voluntarily.”
“Neither did I. My mother made the bargain.”