'I have been quite happy,' Gladys replied, with a slight touch of dignity not lost upon the lawyer's wife.
'Perhaps because you knew nothing else. We will show you what life can hold for such as you,' she answered kindly; and there came a day when Gladys reminded her of these words in the bitterness of a wounded heart.
When her visitor left, Gladys ran up-stairs to Walter. They had so long depended on each other for solace and sympathy, that it seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to share this new experience with him.
'You heard the lady speaking, did you not, Walter?' she asked breathlessly. 'It was Mr. Fordyce's wife; she is so beautiful and so kind. Just think, she would have taken me away with her in her carriage.'
'And why didn't you go?' asked Walter in a dull, even voice, and without appearing in the least interested.
'Oh because I could not leave just now,' she said slowly, quite conscious of a change in his voice and look.
'But you will go, I suppose, after?'
'I suppose so. They seem to wish it very much.'
'And you want to go, of course. They are very grand West End swells. I know their house—a big mansion looking over the Kelvin,' he said, not bitterly, but in the same even, indifferent voice.
'I don't know anything about them. If that is true, it is still kinder of them to think of such a poor girl as I.'