“That was not all. In order to add to your father’s indignation, he took care to describe your betrothed in the most odious colors. He not only charged her with poverty, but represented her as an artful and designing country girl, uneducated and unrefined, whose only object in marrying you was to gratify a vulgar taste for finery and ostentation. In fact, he taxed his imagination to the utmost, in the endeavor to portray her in a manner which he knew would render her most unacceptable to the family pride of your father. I should add that he even denied her the charm of personal beauty, and pictured her to your father as equally unattractive in mind and person.”
A red spot glowed in the pale cheek of Robert Ford, who, mild as he was, could not hear unmoved this vile slander upon one he loved. To do Mr. Sharp justice, what he said was not exaggerated, but strictly in accordance with truth.
“Are you sure of this?” he asked, pacing the room in a perturbed manner.
“I am. You shall know my authority soon, but not now.”
“Now, I am not surprised at my father’s continued resentment. To traduce my Helen so cruelly!”
“You will not wonder that all this should have had the effect intended,—that of confirming your father in his opposition. You married, and left this part of the country.”
“Yes; I went to the West.”
“And did you hear nothing from your father afterwards?”
“Never, directly.”
“Yet you had not been married six months before he began to relent, and feel that he might have exercised undue severity.”