“Harriet,” began Mynheer Mopius, thoroughly cowed, like the bully he was, “you must allow at least another month to intervene before the thing can be even mooted. I always admitted, Harriet, you know, that you were a very good-looking girl. But, before I say another word, I must insist on you going down on your bended knees and humbly begging my pardon for your disgraceful conduct of the other night.”
Harriet Verveen understood the antagonist she had vanquished. The proud girl actually knelt on the carpet, and slowly repeated the humiliating words.
“Very good!” said Mynheer Mopius, in high good-humor, “and, Harriet, I won’t marry you till you succeed in matching that cup you broke.” He smiled to himself in the glass, the future Town Councillor! “You are very poor, Harriet,” he continued, “and of humble origin. It is a great thing for you to become Madame Mopius. I hope you feel that.”
“Oh yes,” replied Harriet, meekly. She had got up from the floor. Meanwhile the footman had brought in a tray of biscuit. She fell on them ravenously.
“Well, Harriet, if ever I make you my wife—and I don’t say I shall, mind—I hope you will be a good and obedient consort, like the faithful creature I have lost.”
“Oh yes,” said Harriet again. Soon after she went back to her lodgings, with a little money in her purse. She turned in the hall door of Villa Blanda.
“Won’t I pay you out for this!” she said aloud. Never till the day of her death could she look down at her knees without seeing dust upon them. Mopius had cause to remember his triumph, though she made him a good wife on the whole.
That evening, far into the night, the miserable woman lay at the open window of her garret, with her forehead knocking the sill. Her neighbor, a poor, blind seamstress, sat up in bed trembling, awe-struck by the sobs that seemed to shake the flimsy house. It was winter, bitterly, frostily cold. On the window-sill, bent, pressed back again, clammy with kisses, stuck a stupid bit of pasteboard—the smirking photograph of a man.