Rosina cast a glance of venomous triumph at her drooping husband. The jail was a chance shot. In long, lonely, agonizing watches the resentful suspicion had germinated and grown.
“It’s true,” she said, defiantly. “Let him deny it.”
“Why did you take a husband from jail?” retorted the painter, with a flash of fire.
“I didn’t know it; I was tricked and bamboozled, and I had a heart in my breast then, not a stone. If I had been a fine lady I might have been more particular to examine your pedigree.”
A sense of guilt damped the man’s fire. The jail episode was not the only thing he had concealed.
“If you’re sorry you married me we can separate,” he murmured.
“Separate—aren’t we separated enough? Do you mean you’d like a divorce? Oh no, not for this child. So that you may marry one of your fine ladies. Perhaps make an honest woman of her?”
“Rosina!” He sprang to his feet, thundering. The image of Eleanor Wyndwood swept involuntarily before him, and he felt that this coarse-tongued woman had profaned it.
She flinched before the cry, but parodied it daringly.
“Matthew!”