“What does the girl mean?” I asked impatiently.
“I mean”—lowering her voice, two tears now rolling slowly down her cheeks—“that my marriage has been a terrible mistake. I am afraid of Mr. Raymond, I am—indeed. Oh, why did I ever leave my home?”
To hear a bride of a few weeks talk in this way gave me a most unpleasant sensation.
“Nonsense, my dear girl! you are only a little bilious; it is the sea air. If you had not liked the man, I’m sure you would not have married him.”
“It was all my mother’s doing,” she rejoined in a choked voice. “You see—I need not tell you—that I am not a lady by birth like you, and it was a grand match for the likes of me.”
“Tell me where you met him, and how it all came about? You may be sure I shall keep whatever you relate to myself.”
“I met him up in the lake country, where my mother keeps a little inn—The Trout and Fly. She is a widow and has three daughters; I am the youngest—and best looking.”
“Yes, go on.”
“I was always a bit spoiled, I suppose on account of my looks, and I was sent to quite a genteel boarding-school in Carlisle, where I learnt French and the piano, and when I came home I was never asked to help in the housework like Lizzie and Susan, or to wash dishes or cook; mother could not bear me to soil a finger, and so I used to sew and do a little millinery and that. She never allowed me, even in the busy time, to set foot in the bar or coffee-room, or to come across visitors at all; but one day I met Mr. Raymond on the stairs.” She paused, sighed, and then added in a most melancholy tone, “And that began it all!”
“I suppose so,” I acquiesced sympathetically.