"So you're married now, I 'ear," said Mrs. Hewson.
"Yes." Sally beamed with her reply, and Janet watched her with questioning eyes.
"I hope you're happy."
"I couldn't be happier," Sally answered; then she dragged Janet upstairs to the room they had shared together for two years, and throwing her parcels—presents that she had brought from abroad—on to the bed, she twined her arms round Janet's slender neck and covered the thin, drawn face with kisses.
One knows the endearments that such an occasion exacts. They come out of a full heart and bear no repetition, for only a full heart can understand them. They swept over Janet, for the moment blinding her in her fondness for this child, full of swift impulse in her gratitude, and drugged with romance in her mind. But once those endearments had been spoken, when once the presents had been divested of their paper wrappings—porcelain representations of the Bambinos from Florence—a marble statue of the Venus de Milo from Pisa—an ornament in mosaic from Rome—when once they had been set up, admired, paid for in kisses of gratitude, then Janet gave words to the questions that had been looking from her eyes.
"What sort of a settlement has he made on you?" she asked.
The inquiry, notwithstanding the fact that it had been spoken with a gentle voice, tuned to consideration for her feelings, struck the sensitiveness of Sally's mind, whipped the blood to her cheeks.
"There is no settlement. Why should there be?"
"Why? Well, for every reason in the world, I should think."
"There is none, then."