“I’m glad that you have come to see that—that vengeance is God’s, not man’s,” said he, with great solemnity.
She replied substantially that she was glad it was in such capable hands, though the words that she employed were of conventional acquiescence in the conventionally Divine.
“Whatever the man may have been, he died like a man,” resumed her father, repeating the phrase that he had used before. “You must respect his memory for that deed.”
She could not help feeling that she would respect his memory more on this account if he had done the deed before she had met him. But she did not express this view. She only bent her head; she was no longer a rebellious child, only a hypocritical one.
“It’s a shocking thing—an awful thing!” continued her father. “To think that within a year your mother and your husband have gone. Have you yet grasped the fact that you are a widow, Priscilla?”
She certainly had not grasped this fact. The notion of her being a widow seemed to her supremely funny. But for the sake of practice in the career of duplicity which he was marking out for her, she took out her handkerchief and averted her head.
He put a strong arm about her, saying, “My poor child—my poor motherless child! I did not forget you when I was in the town just now. I called at Grindley’s and told them to send one of their hands out here with samples, so as to save you from the ordeal of appearing in public in your ordinary dress.”
She moved away from his sheltering embrace.
“Samples—samples—of what?” she said.
“Of the cap—the—Ah! that I should live to see my child wearing widow’s weeds!”