“Yes. And I said I’d do something to stop it. And I have!” She broke down, suddenly, and wept. “Oh, Mrs. Mearely. You don’t know what it is to almost have things, and then be pushed aside. It makes you desperate and wicked. To think that just because we’re poor, we can’t marry.”
Rosamond stared at her.
“Of course I knew he paid you attentions—but I had no idea there was really an understanding.” Her blankness disappeared before a humiliating sense of outrage.
“Oh! the insufferable—the wretched, false, insulting man. To dare to offer himself to me! Oh the—the....” She turned on Mabel. “What are you crying about? I should think you’d be glad of your escape.”
She strode the length of the room and back again, breaking out in interjections and tumbled phrases.
“I was Money! How dare he humble me in this fashion? Oh! But I’ll be even with him. Oh yes! I’ll find a revenge. I was to be his dear little Money, eh?”
Mabel’s helpless sobbing was reaching her sympathies and making her doubly angry, because she did not want her sympathies reached. She stamped her foot.
“Stop that crying. Do you hear me? Do you mean to say you can still love the wretch? You can’t respect him.”
Mabel wiped her eyes, and looked at her curiously.
“Oh—respect! I wonder if women ever respect men a great deal. Perhaps that is what makes them love so much—to make up for the lack. I think men have to respect women. But women just have to love. I love him. I don’t know why. Maybe just because he is a man and I’m a woman. One must love somebody.”