Family Pride; Or, Purified by Suffering

by Mary Jane Holmes

"I am glad they did; I should hate you if you had not cried," Katie exclaimed, her voice more natural than it had been since the great shock came, and her own tears falling fast to the memory of Genevra, whose grave she had sat upon with Wilford standing near.

A buried wife was not so dreadful to contemplate as a wife divorced but living still, and Katy's heart did not beat with quite so heavy throbs of fear and shame as it had at first. But it was very sore with the feeling that to her almost as great a wrong had been done as to Genevra, for had he not deceived her from the very first, he and his mother, who had been the terror of Genevra's life as she was the bane of Katy's.

"Do you forgive me, Katy? Do you love me as well as ever?" Wilford asked, stooping down to kiss her, but Katy drew her face away and did not answer then.

She did not know herself just how she felt toward him. He did not seem just like the husband she had trusted in so blindly. It would take a long time to forget that another head than hers had lain upon his bosom, and it would take longer yet to blot out the memory of the complaining words uttered to his mother. She had never thought he could do that, never dreamed of such a thing, knowing that she would sooner have parted with her right hand than have complained of him. Her idol had fallen in more respects than one, and the heart it had bruised in the fall refused at once to gather the shattered pieces up and call them good as new. She was not obstinate, she was not sulky, as Wilford began to fancy. She was only stunned and could not rally at his bidding. He had confessed the whole, keeping nothing back, and he felt that Katy was unjust not to acknowledge his magnanimity and restore him to her favor. Again he asked forgiveness, again bent down to kiss her, but Katy answered: "Not yet, Wilford, not till I feel all right toward you. A wife's kiss should be sincere."

"As you like," trembled on Wilford's lips, but he beat back the words and walked up and down the room, knowing now that his journey must be deferred till morning, and wondering if Katy would hold out till then.

It was long past midnight, but to retire was impossible, and so for one whole hour he paced through the room, while Katy lay with her eyes closed and her lips moving occasionally in the words of prayer she tried to say, asking God to help her, and praying that she might in future lay her treasures up where they could not so suddenly be swept away. Wearily the hours passed, and the gray dawn was stealing into the room when Wilford again approached his wife and said, "You know I was to have left home last night on business. As I did not go then, it is necessary that I leave this morning. Are you able to stay alone for three days or more? Are you willing?"

"Yes—oh, yes," Katy replied, feeling that to have him gone while she battled with the pain lying so heavy at her heart would be a great relief.

Perhaps he suspected this feeling in part, for he bit his lip impatiently, and without another word called up the servant whose duty it was to prepare his early breakfast. Cold and cheerless seemed the dining-room, to which an hour later he repaired, and tasteless was the breakfast without Katy there to share it. She had been absent many times before, but never just as now, with this wide gulf between them, and as he broke his egg and tried to drink his coffee, Wilford felt like one from whom every support had been swept away, leaving him tottering and giddy. He did not like the look of Katy's face or the sound of her voice, and as he thought upon them, self began to whisper again that she had no right to stand out so long when he had confessed everything, and by the time his breakfast was finished Wilford Cameron was, in his own estimation, an abused an injured man, so that it was with an air of defiance rather than humility that he went again to Katy. She, too, had been thinking, and as the result of her thoughts she lifted up her head as he came in and said, "I can kiss you now, Wilford."

It was human nature, we suppose—at least it was Wilford's nature—which for an instant tempted him to decline the kiss proffered so lovingly; but Katy's face was more than he could withstand, and when again he left that room the kiss of pardon was upon his lips and comparative quiet was in his heart.

"The picture, Wilford—you have forgotten that," Katy called after him, as he was running down the stairs.