"It's the Marshall blood with which he is tainted."
"Marshall blood!" repeated Jessie, indignantly. "I'd like to know by what chemical process you have mingled the Marshall blood with William Bellenger's."
Mrs. Reeves could not explain. She only knew that she was completely overwhelmed with surprise and mortification, and she seemed so bewildered and helpless that Mr. Graham ordered his carriage, and sent her to No.—, whither the sad news had preceded her, and where Charlotte lay fainting and moaning in the midst of her bridal finery, which would never be worn. She had noticed William's absence from the house for the last twenty-four hours, and was wondering at it, when her father, roused by the shock from his usual state of quiet passiveness, rushed in, telling her in thunder tones that her affianced husband had been guilty of forging Graham & Marshall's name, not once, not twice, but many times, until at last he was detected and under arrest.
"He'll go to State prison, girl—do you hear? To State prison! Why don't you speak, and not sit staring at me with that milky face?"
Poor Charlotte could not speak, but she fainted and fell at the feet of her father, who became himself at once, and bending kindly over her brought her back to life. It was not that Charlotte loved William so very much. It was rather her pride which was wounded, and she moaned and wept until her grandmother came, and with her lamentations and reproaches, so wholly out-did all Charlotte had done, that the latter grew suddenly calm, and without a word or a tear, sat motionless, while the old lady raved on, one moment talking as if they were all going to prison together, and the next giving Charlotte most uncomfortable squeezes to think she was not the wife of a forger after all.
————
The three Thayers were for the time forgotten, and when at Charlotte's request Jessie came to see her, accompanied by her grandmother, Mrs. Reeves kissed the latter affectionately, whispering in her ear:
"We'll not mind the past, for the present has enough of trouble and disgrace."
Great was the excitement among William's friends, the majority of whom turned against him, saying "they expected it and knew all the time that something was wrong."
Mr. Graham stood by and pitied the cowed and wretched young man, and pitied him all the more that his father kept aloof, saying: