“But we don’t wish to be free,” said Rhoda, in a puzzled tone.
“You are mistaken, my dear, so far as one of you is concerned. Perhaps it had been yet more graceful had you been the one to loose the bond: yet Mr Welles has done it with so infinite a grace and spirit that I can scarce regret your omission. My dear, you are now entirely free. He sets you completely at liberty, and has retired from all pretension to you.”
“But what, Aunt Anne—I do not understand you!” exclaimed Rhoda, in accents of bewildered amazement, which had a ring of agony beneath, as though she was struggling against the comprehension of a grief she was reluctant to face.
“Surely, my dear, you must have understood me,” said Mrs Latrobe. “Mr Welles resigns his suit to you.”
“He has given me up?” bursts from Rhoda’s lips.
“He has entirely given you up. You cannot have really expected anything else?”
“I thought he was true!” said Rhoda through her set teeth. “Are you sure you understood him? Phoebe, you tell me,—did he mean that?”
“O Rhoda! poor Rhoda! I am afraid he did!” said Phoebe, as distinctly as tears would let her.
“But, my dear,” interposed Mrs Latrobe, remonstratingly, “surely you cannot be surprised? When Mr Welles engaged himself to you, it was (as he thought) to the heiress of a large estate. You could not expect him to encumber himself with a wife who brought him less than one year’s income of his own. ’Tis not reasonable, child. No man in his senses would do such a thing. We live in the world, my dear,—not in Utopia.”
“We live in a hard, cold, wicked, miserable world, and the sooner we are out of it the better!” came in a constrained voice from Rhoda.