"Did she want him to marry you?" said Janetta, in some amaze.
"It doesn't seem likely, does it?" said Mrs. Brand, with a sharp, heartless little laugh. "But she sets up for having a conscience now and then. I was a girl in a shop, I may tell you, and Wyvis made love to me without the slightest idea of marrying me. Then Mrs. Brand comes on the scene: 'Oh, my dear boy, you mustn't make that young woman unhappy. I was made unhappy by a gentleman when I was a girl, and I don't want you to behave as he did."
"And that was very good of Mrs. Brand!" said Janetta, courageously.
Juliet made a grimace. "After a fashion. She had better have let us alone. She put Wyvis into a fume about his honor; and so he asked me to marry him. And I cared for him—though I cared more about his position—and I said yes. So we were married, and a nice cat and dog life we had of it together."
"And then you left him?"
"Yes, I did. I got tired of it all at last. But I always lived respectably, except for taking a little too much stimulant now and then; and I never brought any dishonor on his name. And at last I thought the best thing for us both would be to set him free. And I wrote to him that he was free. But there was some hitch—I don't know what exactly. Any way, we're bound to each other as fast as ever we were, so we needn't think to get rid of each other just yet."
Janetta felt a throb of thankfulness, for Margaret's sake. Suppose she had yielded to Wyvis' solicitations and become his wife, to be proved only no wife at all? Her want of love for Wyvis had at least saved her from terrible misery. Mrs. Brand went on, reflectively—
"When I'm gone, he can marry whom he likes. I only hope it'll be anybody as good as you. You'd make a capital mother to Julian. And I don't suppose I shall trouble anybody very long."
"You are getting better—you will soon be perfectly well."
"Nonsense: nothing of the kind. But if I am, I know one thing," said Mrs. Brand, in a petulant tone; "I won't be kept out of my rights any longer. This house seems to be nice and comfortable: I shall stay here. I am tired of wandering about the world."