Josephine knew she did not suppose any such thing, and that in all probability she had seen the notice in the Star, and had come to spy out the land, but it was not her policy to parade her story unsolicited; so she merely replied that she was not a relative of Mrs. Forrest’s, though her mamma and that lady had been friends in their girlhood. To have been a friend of the late Mrs. Forrest stamped a person as somebody, and Mrs. Rider began at once to espouse the cause of this woman, to whom she said:
“I hope you will excuse me if I seem forward in what I am about to say. I am Mrs. Rider, wife of the family physician, and a friend of Everard, and when I saw that notice of his marriage in the Star I could hardly credit it, though I know such things have been before; but four years is such a long time to keep an affair of that kind a secret. May I ask if it is true, and if you are the wife?”
“It is true, and I am his wife, or I should not be here,” Josey said, very quietly.
“Yes, certainly not, of course,” Mrs. Rider replied, hardly knowing what she was saying, and wishing that the fair blonde whose eyes were looking so steadily into the fire would say something more, but she didn’t.
She was waiting for her visitor to question her, which she presently did, for she could never leave the matter in this way, so she said:
“You will pardon me, Mrs. Forrest, but knowing a little makes me want to know more. It seems so strange that Everard should have been a married man for more than four years and we never suspect it. It must have been a private marriage.”
“Ye-es, in one sense,” Josephine said, with the air of one who is having something wrung from him unwillingly. “A great many people saw us married, for it was in a drama,—a play,—but none of them knew it was meant to be real and binding, except Everard and myself and the clergyman, who was a genuine clergyman. We knew and intended it, of course, or it would not have been valid. We were engaged, and did it on the impulse of the moment, thinking no harm. Nor was there, except that we were both so young, and Everard not through college. We told mother and sister, but no one else, and as the villagers did not know of our intention to be married, or that Dr. Matthewson was a clergyman, they never suspected the truth, and the secret was to be kept until Everard was graduated, and after that——”
She spoke very slowly now, and drew long breaths, as if every word she uttered were a stab to her heart.
“After that I hoped to get out of my false position, but there was some fear of Judge Forrest, which kept Everard silent, waiting for an opportunity to tell him, for I was not rich, you know, and he might be angry; so I waited patiently, and his father died, and I went to Europe, and thus the years have gone.”
The blue eyes, in which the tears were shining, more from steadily gazing into the fire than from emotion of any kind, were lifted to Mrs. Rider, who was greatly affected, and then said: