“Umph! looks well enough, for that matter, but I do not like her. She is quite too forward, and familiar, and affected. There’s nothing real about her, but her brass and vulgarity. And you boarded there, it seems, and knew her well?” the judge said, testily, and Everard stammered out that he did board with Mrs. Fleming, and had found Josephine a very agreeable young lady.
He must say so much in defense of the girl who was his wife, but it seemed to vex his father, who began to lose his temper, and said he should think very little of a young man who could find anything agreeable in that girl!
“Why, she’s no modesty or womanly delicacy at all, or she would not try to attract as she does with her eyes, and her hands, and her fan, and her naked arms, and the Lord only knows what. You are no son of mine if you can find pleasure in the society of such women as she represents. Why, she is as unlike Beatrice and Rossie as darkness is unlike daylight.”
This was the judge’s verdict, and Everard felt his chain cutting deeper and deeper as he thought how impossible it was for him to acknowledge the marriage now. He did not sleep at all that night, and the morning found him pale, and haggard, and spiritless, as he walked down the road in the direction of Mrs. Everts’. Josey was waiting for him and ready for the train. She had not told any of her numerous admirers that she expected to leave that morning, as she wished to see Everard alone. She was neither pale, nor fagged, nor tired-looking, though she, too, had passed a sleepless night, but her complexion was just as soft, and creamy, and smooth, and her eyes just as bright and melting as she welcomed her husband, and laying her hand on his, said to him: “You are going with your father, I suppose. How long before I can come too?”
There was a sudden lifting of his hand to his head as if he had been struck, and Everard staggered a little back from her, as he replied:
“Come to Forrest House? I don’t know. I am afraid that will never be while father lives.”
“Yes, I saw he took a great dislike to me, and probably he has been airing his opinion of me to you,” she said, tartly; then, as Everard did not speak, she continued: “Tell me what he said of me.”
“Why should he say anything of you to me? He knows nothing,” Everard asked, and Josephine replied:
“I don’t know why. I only know he has; so, out with it. I insist upon knowing the worst. What did he say?”
There was a hard ring in her voice, which Agnes knew well, but which Everard had never heard before, and a look in her eyes before which he quailed; and after a moment, during which she twice repeated: