“Don’t you dare to come nearer!” she said sternly. “I’m only a poor farmer’s daughter, but I respect myself, sir! I regret that I spoke to you about Dollie at all! I might have known better. I have never trusted you!”
She stood with her right arm upraised as she said these words, her fair face turned unflinchingly toward the handsome insulter.
A careless sneer crossed the man’s dark face.
“You have never trusted me, eh,” he said, half smilingly. “Well, that will not make much difference with me, I guess. You’ll trust me more some day, my haughty Marion!”
“Never!” cried Marion, with a hot flush of shame. “Not as long as I remember your insulting words. But enough, Mr. Lawson, I will not detain you longer.”
She swept by him like a queen and went into the house.
Her mother was sitting in the kitchen patiently darning stockings.
“Mother! mother!” cried Marion sharply, as she threw herself on her knees by her side. “Is it possible that you are willing for Dollie to be sacrificed? Are you going to sit calmly by and see her sold in bondage to Silas Johnson?”
“What kin I dew?” asked her mother, irritably; “ef your father sez so, what kin I dew? ’Tain’t a wife’s place to meddle with her husband’s runnin’ of his fam’ly.”
“But think of it, mother, what her life will be when she is tied to a man whom she does not love! Have you no sympathy for your daughter? Think what you have suffered! And there is poor Sister Samantha! She is a perfect slave to her stupid husband, when with her looks and talents she might have done so much better!”