“Oh, my heart is broken!” the poor woman cried wildly. “I never knew I could suffer so much, and through Chrissie! She has broken my heart!” was the moan again and again, while poor Polly stood by, blanched and trembling.
Once the mother lifted her face.
“It is all true, Polly,” she whispered, “all that Mr. Ambleton said. She has known it all along—he is a hopeless drunkard, and she has married him, married him against my prayers, against her father’s will. What hope of blessing can rest on such a marriage? Oh, I would I had been dead before I had lived to see this thing come to my own dear child!”
Winifred only shrugged her shoulders when she heard the news.
“Sir Mark may be ten times worse than they say, he is still Sir Mark and a very rich man, and Chrissie is now Lady Wentworth. I can’t see what there is to make such a fuss about.”
Polly made no reply. Her heart was surging with pain, bewilderment and doubt.
She was too young to understand it all, but on one point she was very much determined—she detested Valentine Ambleton with all her might and main.
“If he had not come here and made that scene, Chrissie would never have done what she has done!” she said to herself, confidently.
She had her small hands full in these days; her mother’s health gave her much anxiety.
The servants had departed, and though Polly was glad they should go, in one sense, it made the big house very gloomy.