“You have seen the picture, Bee,” he said. “I showed it to you that day I broke my head, two years ago, and you said she looked as if she might wear cotton lace, while mother, to whom I showed it, too, hinted at dollar jewelry, and Rossie said she looked as if she were a sham.”
Here Everard laughed himself, but there was more of bitterness than mirth in it, and Beatrice laughed, too, as she said:
“That was rather hard;—cotton lace, dollar jewelry, and a sham, though, after all, Rossie’s criticism was really of the most consequence, if true; perhaps it is not. Have you her picture now?”
He passed it to her, and with a shrewd woman’s intuition, quickened by actual knowledge, Beatrice felt that it was true, and her first womanly instinct was to help and comfort this man who had brought his secret to her.
“Ned,” she said to him, and the name, now so seldom used, took her back to the days when she first came from France and played and quarreled with him. It made her altogether his sister, and as such she spoke. “Ned, I am so sorry for you; sorrier than I can express, and I want to help you some way, and I think it must be through Josephine. She is your wife, and by your own showing you were quite as much in fault as she.”
“Yes, quite,” and Everard shivered a little, for he guessed what was coming.
“Well, then,” Beatrice went on, “ought you not to make the best of it? You took her for better or worse, knowing what you were doing. You loved her then. Can you not do so again? Is it not your duty to try?”
“Oh, Bee, you do not know, you do not understand. She is not like you, nor Rossie, nor mother.”
“Well, try to make her like us, then,” Beatrice replied. “If her surroundings are not such as please you, remove her from them at once. Recognize her as your wife. Bring her home to Forrest House and I will stand her friend to the death.”
Everard knew that Bee meant what she said, and that her influence was worth more than that of the whole town, and if he could have felt any love or even desire for Josephine, it would have seemed easy to acknowledge his marriage, with Bee’s hopeful words in his ear and Bee’s strong nature to back him, but he did not. He had no love, no desire for her; he was happier away from her, happier to live his present life with Beatrice and Rossie; and, besides that, he could not bring her home; his father would never permit it, and would probably turn him from the door if he knew of the alliance. This Bee did not know, but he told her of the great aversion his father had conceived for the girl whom he stigmatized as the yellow-haired hussy from Massachusetts, “and after that, do you think I can tell him?” he asked.