"I could love Mr. Phœbus, plain as he is," the widow spoke, "if I could persuade myself that Oden is dead. But that I cannot do. A real person—spirit or man—is watching over me closely. My very shoes I wear to-night came from that mysterious agent. It is not my son; it is not James Phœbus. No other stranger would so secretly assist me. I am bound up in the fear and wonder that it is my husband."
"That does beat conjecture," said old Mrs. Tilghman. "Have you no friend you might suspect?"
"None," the widow answered. "None who have not worn out their means of giving long ago. Can I marry, with this ghostly visitation coming so regularly? Should I not have faith in a husband's living if I receive a wife's care from an unseen hand?"
"Oden Dennis," Mrs. Custis remarked, "was hardly a man to do charity and not be seen. He was rather self-indulgent, demonstrative, and restless. I cannot think of his nocturnal visits in the body. Besides, he would not supply you in that way, Norah, if he meant to come back; and if he cannot himself come to you, neither could he send."
Not altogether relishing Mrs. Tilghman's reproof, Rhoda was again heard from, saying:
"Lord sakes! all the women has to talk about when they is gone is the men. When the men comes, they talks as if they never missed of 'em. Misc Somers, she never had no man, an' she talks mos' about the women that has got one. I think Aunt Vesty has got the best man in Prencess Anne. He's the richest. He's the freest. He never courted no other gal. He ain't got no quar old women runnin' of him down—caze Misc Somers is dreffle afraid of him!" This last remark seemed apologetic and an afterthought.
"I am beginning to think my fortune is better than I deserve," Vesta replied, to soften the application, as wine, tea, and cake were brought in. "Now, dear friends, as I am Mr. Milburn's wife, let us all be Christians this Sunday night, and drink his health and happy recovery, and that he may never repent his marriage."
They drank with some hesitation, except the bride, Rhoda, and Mrs. Dennis. Mrs. Tilghman needed the wine too much to wait long, and Mrs. Custis, finding she was observed, took a sip from her glass also, excusing herself on the ground of a recent headache from drinking heartily.
As the conversation proceeded, now by general participation, again by couples apart, and Vesta found herself more and more a subject of sympathy, with no little curiosity interwoven in it, she also imagined that an undertone of belief was abroad that she had made a mercenary marriage.
Old Mrs. Tilghman—in her prime a most caustic belle, and worldly as three marriages, all shrewdly contracted, could make her—seemed determined to hold that Vesta had rejected her grandson for the money-lender on the consideration of wealth. Vesta's own mother, too, who should have known her well, had twice hinted the same. Even the inoffensive Ellenora had accepted that idea, or another kin to it, and Rhoda Holland had remembered that her uncle was the richest of bridegrooms in Princess Anne. Vesta felt the injustice, but said to herself: