“Yes, mother; more than you can guess. I’ll tell you about it by and by; to-night, maybe, when I feel stronger. I can’t talk now.”
“Would you like me to tell you how well everything passed off at the grave, and how thoughtful Col. Schuyler was?” Mrs. Fordham continued, and Heloise replied:
“No, mother, not a word, now nor ever. I can’t bear it. I almost hate the Schuylers, and I wish I, too, was dead.”
It was not often that Heloise was thus moved, and her mother looked at her curiously, but she said no more of the Schuylers or Abelard, and busied herself with putting the cottage to rights and preparing a tempting little supper for her daughter. But Heloise could not eat, and after the supper was cleared away and her mother had taken her usual seat upon the back porch, she crept to her side, and putting her head in her lap, said entreatingly:
“Mother, I have something to tell you which will surprise and probably offend you. I ought to have told it before, but I was afraid and kept putting it off. It was wrong, I know, but it cannot now be helped. Abelard and I were married!”
“You married to Abelard Lyle!” Mrs. Fordham exclaimed, starting back as if a serpent had stung her.
She did not say, “I am glad then that he is dead,” but she thought it, and the thought must have communicated itself to Heloise, for she lifted up her head and looked reproachfully in her mother’s face, while her lip quivered in a grieved kind of way, but she did not cry, and her voice was steady as she said:
“Oh, mother, don’t speak so to me, as if marrying him was the most disgraceful thing I could do. I loved him so much, and he loved me. It was during the long voyage when I saw so much of him. You know you were sick most of the time, and that left me to him, and he was so kind, and before we reached New York I promised to be his wife some time, and meant to tell you.”
“Why didn’t you, then?”
The tone was harsh and unrelenting in which Mrs. Fordham put this question, and Heloise flushed a little and answered, hurriedly: