There was a strange aching at her heart as she said it. Looking at the flat, flaccid visage of her interlocutor, she would have declared it to be impossible for her to wound her by this inane twaddle, peppered with weak spite. Yet she had set a nerve ajar.
"If I had a husband—"the "practical" woman was saying to herself—"his kisses would be too dear and sacred to be counted over and boasted of to others. If I had a husband! Heaven help me! I have none!"
The china-blue eyes of the shallow pate over there would have glittered with malicious delight in her own shrewdness, had she guessed how near to the truth was her description of the external intercourse of those whom the church and the world named as one.
"It is awfully nice to be married!" she rattled on, growing more and more confidential. "There is such solid comfort in the reflection that your destiny is accomplished. No more need for anxiety and setting one's cap, and all that. I shall never forget the delicious peace that filled my whole soul when I first heard myself called 'Mrs. Wyllys!' when I appreciated that the irrevocable step was taken. Still, it seems very sudden. It is just a year since I heard Orrin spoken of as your beau—a funny mistake, as you know, but I didn't then. Oh! how angry I was! for I had determined, even then, that he should fall in love with me. Maybe you recollect the time? It was one day when we were playing billiards at Judge Provost's, and somebody—Fanny, I believe—said he was your teacher. Afterward, the girls began talking about Mr. Fordham's attentions to another young lady—never supposing that he was engaged to you all the time. By the way—did I ever tell you that my dear, upright, kind-hearted husband charged me to mention to you that that was all a foolish mistake?"
"What was a mistake?"
Jessie looked up, arresting the swift, even motion of her fingers.
"Why, the story of Mr. Fordham's engagement to Maria Dunn, a young lady of our city."
"I recollect that you stated it as a fact," returned Jessie, pointedly. "She was an intimate friend of yours, you said, and that you had the tale directly from her. You said, moreover, that Mr. Fordham had called upon you, in company with her."
Hester's thin skin was mottled with mulberry.
"Well, yes! we were a good deal together, at one time, and she certainly did lead me to believe that Mr. Fordham was in love with her—now I come to think of it. I have forgotten the exact circumstances, but there was some talk about it and she did all she could to excite sympathy, until she took a fancy to marry another man. A miserably poor match she made—a clerk upon a salary of two thousand dollars! and her father with seven children! Then, she vowed there had never been any attachment between herself and Mr. Fordham. She was related to the friends he was visiting, and he happened to act as her escort once or twice. For my part, I am sure he never gave her reason to think that he cared a rush for her. She was one of those girls who are always running after the men, and fancy that every gentleman who looks at them is going to propose on the spot. If there is one creature whom I despise above all others, it is a woman who thinks marriage the chief end of her existence. I really thought I had spoken to you about this, long ago. Dear Orrin told me to do it, just after we were married. He said you might allude to the affair in talking with Mr. Fordham, and I might be drawn into a libel-suit or fuss of some kind. I can't see how I came to forget it—I am usually so particular in following his advice!"