“Can’t you see? I’m going to retire. You are now the head of the Shawsheen Mills.”
Villard said nothing. In spite of the great love between them, he could not forget that she was wealthy nor that he was poor.
“I have to-day made over the entire mill property to you,” she went on. “I am not going to have it said that your wife has all the money and all the power, and that you are only her dependent.”
“Salome! you dear, generous heart,” said Villard brokenly; “I cannot accept.” He felt that she had divined his sensitiveness, although she had been too delicate to speak of it. “I am poor, but I am not a beggar.”
“And I, too, am proud,” she replied, laying her hand on his cheek. “I will not have people saying that you are tied to a rich wife and are subject to her whims. Oh, I know how they talk; I have seen and heard them all my life! Why, they would say you were a fortune-hunter.”
“You do not think so?” he asked, gently.
“Confess, dear,” she answered him. “If it had not been for that, wouldn’t you have spoken long ago?”
Villard pressed her closer.
“I came very near it, as it was,” he said, presently. “But I could not bear to be thought that.”
“I had the necessary papers made out this afternoon,” she said after an eloquent silence, “when I was out. So you see the thing is done whether you will or not. You need have no hesitation. I still have a large fortune left, you know, from the Bourdillons.”