The blood rushed over that white face like a sudden sunset, then the poor girl grew pale again, and purplish shadows came out under her eyes, leaving them, oh, how mournful.
"You need not look so frightened, Kate—there's no harm in it if you do love him, only you haven't got my spirit, that's all."
"What!—what do you mean, Mrs. Mason?"
"What do I mean? why nothing worth mentioning." A peculiar curve of the handsome lip, as Mrs. Mason said this, made the young girl shiver from head to foot.
"Yes, but you have a meaning when you speak of my not having a spirit. Oh, tell me what it is!"
"Why nothing, Kate, only I thought you would have more pride than to take up with another woman's leavings."
"Another woman's leavings!" repeated Kate, all aghast; "another woman's leavings!"
"That was what I observed," answered Mrs. Mason, with a slight toss of the head. "Boasting isn't in my line, or I could point out a certain person who gave Nelse Thrasher his walking papers more than once, as if I would condescend to him, when his superior stood hat in hand."
"You—you—was it so? when, when?"
"Really, Miss Allen, you take away one's breath; of course it was before I married John Mason, as if there could be a choice."