“Of course I am all right!” answered Susan, merrily, and then her voice changed to a tone of sadness and anxiety, “but you are not angry with me, Tom, are you?”
“Certainly not! Why should I be angry?”
“For going away and leaving you all like that, and—”
She hesitated.
“We don’t blame you, Susan, my dear,” said Tom, kindly. “We know that it was all that rascal Markworth’s doing.”
Susan interrupted him at once, and spoke earnestly, with great emotion.
“Do not say a word against him, Tom; he is my husband, and I won’t have a word said against him. If I am changed it is all his doing, and I love him. He has rescued me from ignorance and worse, and made me what I now am. Tom, Tom, you must not say a word against him. I won’t bear it even from you.”
“There, there,” said Tom, soothingly, as if he were speaking to a child, “I did not mean it, and I won’t say another word. But are you happy?”
“Happy!” echoed Susan—the answer to his question could be read in her face—“I never knew what happiness was before. I do not mean to blame you, Tom,” seeing the look of surprise in Tom’s face, “but I could never understand before. I have to thank him for reason and all. I can never repay all that he has done for me.”
Tom saw that it was useless to say anything further, and he changed the tenor of the conversation.