“It was wrong, I know, but you are, you were,—forgive me, mother,—you are prouder, more ambitious than I am. You think I might marry a nobleman, and I shrank from telling you for fear you would separate us and that time you went to Hoboken and stayed a week with your friend, Abelard persuaded me to be married. We could keep it a secret, he said, until he had something beforehand and was in a better position.”
“Umph! As if he could rise to a better position. Child, with your face and manner you might be the first lady in the land, instead of throwing yourself away on a poor carpenter.”
Mrs. Fordham spoke very bitterly, and her eyes had in them a hard, angry look, which roused all the temper there was in the young girl, who answered, hotly:
“Abelard’s profession was an honorable one. Joseph was a carpenter. Abelard was not to blame for being poor; one of his sisters married into as good a family as there is in Scotland, and had he lived he would have risen above poverty and obscurity. America has many avenues for such as he, and I should one day have been so proud of him. Oh, my darling, my husband!”
The temper was all gone now, and the girl’s voice was like a wailing sob as she uttered the name, “My husband,” but it did not touch the mother’s heart or make her one whit sorry for her child.
“Where was it? I mean who married you?” she asked; and Heloise replied:
“A Mr. Calvert, in New York.”
“A dissenter?” was the next question; and Heloise answered:
“Yes, I believe so; Abelard did not care who it was, so we were married, and he looked in the Directory and found the name of the Rev. Charles Calvert, and persuaded me to go there. I think he was not preaching anywhere, but he could marry us the same, and he did.”
“Without any reference or asking you any questions?” Mrs. Fordham said, and Heloise hesitated a little.