He met her outburst with a remonstrative gesture, but there was a mellow light in his eyes and his face had softened. As if resenting a voluntary restraint, he shook back a lock of hair that had fallen upon his forehead.
"But your father?"
Mariana looked at him as if he represented the bar of judgment and she were pleading her cause. She spoke with feverish conviction.
"Oh, he doesn't want me! If you only knew what a relief it was to him when I came away. Things were so much quieter. He likes his wife and I hate her, so we don't agree. There is never any peace when I am there—never."
"And the children?" His eyes met Mariana's, and again his lips twitched nervously. He held the check-rein of desire with a relentless hand, but the struggle told.
"They are horrid," responded Mariana, insistently. "They are all hers. If they had really belonged to me, I wouldn't have left them, but they didn't, not one. And I won't teach them. I'd rather teach the children of that shoemaker across the way. I'd rather scrub the streets."
Anthony smiled, and the tenderness in his eyes rained upon her. The fact that she had thrown herself upon his sympathy completed the charm she exercised over him.
Still he held himself in hand.
"You know of nothing that could call you back?" he asked.
"Nothing," answered Mariana. "I shouldn't like to starve, but I'd almost as soon starve as live on cabbage." Then she faced him tragically. "My father's wife is a very coarse woman. She has cabbage one day and onions the next."