In this Mrs. Dawes entirely agreed with her. "Afterwards you will do as I did; when your reputation is saved, you will separate from him."
"No, that I shall not do. There will be something then that will bind us together. Good God! good God!" she moaned, clinging to her old friend and smothering her cry in the bed-clothes.
Mrs. Dawes sat helpless, holding her. "I don't understand this," she said.
Mary raised her head quickly: "Do you not understand? He did it on purpose to bind me. He knew me."
Then she threw herself across the bed again, miserable, despairing. Between her outbursts of weeping came the cry: "There is no way out of it! no way out of it!"
Mrs. Dawes had neither the strength nor the courage to seek for words to comfort such distress.
It took its free course, until the anger cooled. Mrs. Dawes could feel that another emotion was gradually taking the upper hand. Mary raised her head; in her eyes, red with weeping, was hatred.
"I thought that I was giving myself to a gentleman; I discovered that it was to a speculator." She rose slowly.
"Will you say that to him, child?"
"Most certainly not! Nothing whatever to that effect. I shall merely say that it is necessary we should marry."