"'Geenie will be good all the time, mamma. Geenie won't make mamma cry any more.'"
Marion was sometimes very curious to know whether, with the many obvious changes in Mrs. Cheriton's character, her feelings of aversion to her husband remained. She was well aware that many of the former disagreements with the mother arose from the fact that Mrs. Douglass urged Juliette to write kindly to her husband, from whom they had heard within a few months. To be sure, he had not sent them any intelligence, but in a newspaper accidentally falling under their notice, they had seen his name and knew he was then in New Orleans. If there was any return of affection on the wife's part, no one knew it, for on this subject she maintained the most rigid reserve.
Indeed, Mrs. Cheriton could never be called a frank person. It was only under the influence of very strong emotion that she gave utterance to her deepest feelings. From the first, Marion had noticed this trait, and wondered at it in one so young.
With another child-wife it was exactly the reverse. To her earliest friends—Miss Howard and Hepsey—Esther laid bare all that was in her childish and grateful heart.
Marion often came upon her, singing in a low musical voice, a refrain from the hymn sung at family prayers, and when spoken to she had a way of looking up with her large, deep-set eyes, and smiling, as she said softly,—
"I'm so happy, ma'am. Everybody is so kind to me." And this was while the great ridges on her slender body, caused by her husband's brutal beatings, were still unhealed. In regard to this husband she did not hesitate to speak, though at first with tears.
"Would it be wicked, ma'am, to let him think I belong to him now?"
She asked this one morning when she was braiding her young mistress's abundant tresses and could keep her own face concealed.
"What do you mean?" Marion was startled and spoke in a sharp voice.
"I mean, ma'am, he's shut up now and can't get rum; and he was kind, once; and wouldn't he feel better if he knew that I cared for him a little?"