“Regret, indeed! Regret being the wife of one who has never yet given me an unkind word or look?” she cried, almost indignantly. “No, no, never for one moment, my dear, dear husband!” she added, laying her head on his shoulder with a sigh of content.
“My dear, sweet wife,” he responded, in accents of tenderest affection, pressing his lips again and again to hers and to her cheek and brow, “words can not tell how I love you, or how precious your love is to me!”
“I know it,” she said joyously. “I know you have given me the first place in your heart. Ah, I think mine would break if I saw any reason to doubt it. But please don’t think so ill of me as to suppose for a moment that I could be jealous of your love for your children, the poor motherless darlings, who have been half fatherless, too, for the greater part of their lives!”
“Yes,” he sighed, “when I think of all that I feel I can not be too tenderly careful of them, or too indulgent in all that I may with safety to their best interests.”
“I am sure of it,” she said; “and I do enjoy seeing you and them together; your mutual affection is a continual feast to my eyes. It often reminds me of the happy days when I had a father,” she added, with a slight tremble in her sweet voice and tears in her beautiful eyes. “Oh, how we all loved him! yet not better, I am sure, than your children love you.”
“Though from all I have heard of him, I can hardly doubt that he was far more worthy of it,” sighed the captain. “I fear I have sometimes spoken to my older two with unnecessary sternness. I think life in either army or navy has a tendency to abnormally develop that side of a man’s character.”
Violet looked up with a bright, half roguish smile. “What a talent for concealing your faults you must have! I have known nothing of the sternness you deplore: but mayhap you have been careful to seize your opportunity for its exercise when I was not present.”
“Probably I have, though not consciously with the motive your words would seem to impute,” he replied, returning her smile and caressing her hair and cheek with his hand as he spoke, “but because reproofs have a better effect when given in private.”
“Yes; that is very true,” she said, “but I fear there are many parents who are not, like you, so thoughtful and considerate as always to wait till they have the child alone to administer a deserved reproof.”
“Ah, how kindly determined is my little wife to see nothing but good in her husband!” he said, with a pleased laugh.