“This is the twenty-fifth attempt I have made to attract attention to our unhappy fate. I can make but two more. There are but two beads left of Theresa’s necklace.”
“What is the matter, ma’am? Are you ill?” It was Ambrose; I knew his voice.
Crushing the paper in my hand, I tried to look up; but it was in vain. The sting of sudden and complete disillusion had struck me to the heart; I knew my husband to be a villain.
CHAPTER IV. I LEARN HYPOCRISY.
Only eighteen, but from that moment, a woman. Sunk in horror as I was, I yet had wit enough to clap my hands to my head and say I had been dazzled by the sun.
Ambrose, who, in the week I had been with them, had shown himself delighted with the change my coming had made in the house, looked alarmed at this and wanted to call Mr. Allison; but I forbade him, and said I would go in by myself, which I did under a stress of will-power rarely exercised, I dare believe, by a girl so young and so miserable.
“What shall I say to him? how shall I meet him? how can I hide my knowledge and act as if this thing had never been?” For even in that rush of confusing emotions I recognized one fact; that I must not betray by look or word that I knew his dreadful secret. If he were villain enough to keep a woman, and that woman the rightful owner of the property he was himself enjoying, in a prison he had made for her in her own house, then he was villain enough to strangle the one who had discovered this fact, were she the cherished darling of his seared and calculating heart. I was afraid of him now that I knew him, yet I never thought of flying his presence or revealing his crime. He was, villain or no villain, my husband, and nothing could ever undo that fact or make it true that I had never loved him.
So I went in, but went in slowly and with downcast eyes. The bead and the paper I had dropped into my vinaigrette, which fortunately hung at my side.
“Humphrey,” I said, “when are we going to leave this house? I begin to find it lonesome.”
He was preparing to gather up his papers for his accustomed trip down town, but he stopped as I spoke, and look at me curiously.