“She will live here, of course, as long as she wishes to do so. She is my uncle’s widow, and this was his home, and I wish her to feel that it is still her home.”
Thus May had her own position clearly defined to her. And as she listened to her father’s advice she had no idea of acting on it. But she did not tell him this; she parted with him affectionately, and Mr. Churchill was a proud man as he led her to her carriage and handed her in.
“I’ll bring your stepmother some day over to dine with you, May,” he said, before he parted with his daughter. “I want to see you in your own house; fix some day with your husband for us to come. And now good-by, my pet.”
Then, when May was gone, he returned to the house in a very boastful mood.
“She’s lovely, isn’t she, Sarah?” he remarked to his wife. “But I gave her a bit of advice about madam; madam must be taught her place, and I’ll see that she is too.”
But in the days that followed May was made to feel more than once that Mrs. Temple exercised a considerable influence over her husband’s mind. John Temple was always kind to May, always gentle, but he had fallen back into that easy-going frame of mind which had been habitual to him before he was aroused from it by his bitter remorse and self-reproach. Now, he thought, everything was right for his “little May.” He had made her his wife; he bought her a pony-carriage for herself, and two handsome ponies, so that she could drive wherever she wished, and he allowed her plenty of money, and did not object to her spending it lavishly among the poor and sick.
“I know what suffering and sickness is now, you know, John,” she one day said to him, a little wistfully; but John did not encourage her to talk on the subject. He, in fact, totally ignored, and tried to forget, the miserable time after May had left him. It disturbed him to think of it, and John Temple did not love unpleasant thoughts.
Thus weeks passed away, and May, with her sweet reasonableness of conduct, had almost won some sort of regard from the woman who was yet jealous of her, when one morning May received a letter from her father, plainly expressing a wish that he and his wife should be asked to dine at the Hall.
“It looks so odd to other people, you know, my dear,” he wrote, “and I hope you will not allow anyone to cast a slight on your own father,” and so on.