“I knew you could not be so insane as to throw over such a fortune, together with such a nice young husband,” declared the housekeeper, with a sigh of great relief, “for few young girls would have been mad enough to refuse him. I shudder to think what the result would have been had he taken you at your word and committed suicide, or gone off and married somebody else. Why, you would simply have been a beggar, Jess; thrust out at once upon the cold mercies of the world; for, according to the will, Blackheath Hall, and all of his other possessions, would have been sold within a few months, and the great fortune would have gone to charities.”
“I see how it is,” said Jess, dryly; “you would lose a good home and fine income—that is where your great interest lies, Mrs. Bryson.”
The old housekeeper flushed a fiery red: she knew what Jess said was quite true. She was considering her own interests when she urged this marriage, but it was not pleasant to hear the truth dragged unmercifully forward, and when it was just as well that it should be hidden.
“Very well, I’m going to marry this man just because you insist upon it,” said Jess, bitterly. “I do not love him, and never will; and I shall do quite well if I do not hate him outright.”
“You will learn to care for him in time, my dear child,” declared Mrs. Bryson, who was in no way disconcerted by the girl’s outburst. She was used to Jess’ fiery temper, as she phrased it. She lost no time in communicating the act to Lawyer Abbot, who came to the village to congratulate the girl in person, and to assure her that she had taken an eminently proper course in looking with favor upon the young man whom her benefactor had selected for her husband.
He was considerably flustered by the girl answering in her terribly straightforward manner:
“Perhaps I have, and perhaps I haven’t. All the books that I have ever read have been unanimous in the opinion that a girl should not marry a man unless she loves him.”
“Tut, tut, my dear child; those were only love stories—romances, and people are not romantic in real life, you know,” declared the astute lawyer.
“Then I pity the people in real life, and I wish I were the heroine in a romance,” replied Jess, tossing her dark, curly head defiantly, “for they are the only ones who live ideal lives.”
The lawyer looked as he felt, bewildered, and he could see dimly outlined in the future, breakers ahead for the young man—if she married him.