So now she sat down and cried over this piece of good luck, for her heart filled with forebodings.
He laughed at her, but at last had the grace to console her, and assure her she was tormenting herself for nothing.
“Time will show,” said she, sadly.
Time did show.
Three or four days he came, as usual, to laugh her out of her forebodings. But presently his visits ceased. She knew what that meant: he was living like a gentleman, melting his diamond, and playing her false with the first pretty face he met.
This blow, coming after she had been so happy, struck Phoebe Dale stupid with grief. The line on her high forehead deepened; and at night she sat with her hands before her, sighing, and sighing, and listening for the footsteps that never came.
“Oh, Dick!” she said, “never you love any one. I am aweary of my life. And to think that, but for that diamond—oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!”
Then Dick used to try and comfort her in his way, and often put his arm round her neck, and gave her his rough but honest sympathy. Dick's rare affection was her one drop of comfort; it was something to relieve her swelling heart.
“Oh, Dick!” she said to him one night, “I wish I had married him.”
“What, to be ill-used?”