“I suspected as much,” returned Frederic, “from your failing to write and from the length of your face. What is the matter? You didn’t coax hard enough, I reckon, and I shall have to undertake it for you. How would you like that? I dare say I should be more successful,” and Frederic’s smile was much like the Frederic of other days, when he and Will were college friends together.
“I said everything a man could say, but the chief difficulty is that she don’t love me and does love another,” returned Will, at the same time repeating to his companion as much of his experience as he thought proper.
“A discouraging beginning, I confess,” said Frederic; “but perhaps she will relent.”
“No she won’t,” returned Will; “she is just as decided now as she was that night. I have exhausted all my persuasion; mother has coaxed, so has Mary, so has Nell, and all to no purpose. Marian Grey can never be my wife. If it were not for this other love, though, I would not give it up.”
“Who is the favored one?” Frederic asked, and his friend replied, “Some rascal, I dare say, for she says it is a hopeless attachment on her part, and that makes it all the worse. Now if I knew the man was worthy of her, I should not feel so badly. If it were you, for instance, or somebody like you, I’d try to be satisfied, knowing she was quite as well off as she would be with me,” and Will’s feet went up to the top of the chair as he thought how magnanimous he would be were it Frederic Raymond who was beloved by Marian Grey.
“I am sorry for you,” said Frederic—“sorry that you, too, must walk under a cloud, as I am doing. We little thought, when we were boys, that we should both be called to bear a heavy burden; but thus has it proved. Mine came sooner than yours, and it seems to me ’tis the hardest of the two to bear.”
“Fred, you don’t know what you are saying. Your grief cannot be as great as mine, for I love Marian Grey as man never loved before, and when she told me ‘No,’ and I knew she meant it, I felt as if she were tearing out my very heartstrings. You acknowledge that you never loved your wife; but you married her for—I don’t know what you married for——
“For MONEY!” And the word dropped slowly from Frederic’s lips.
“For money?” repeated Will. “She had no money—this Marian Lindsey. She was a poor orphan, I always thought. Will you tell me what you mean?”
“I have never told a living being why I made that girl my wife,” said Frederic; “but I can trust you, I know, and I have sometimes thought I might feel better if some one shared my secret. Still, I would rather not explain to you how Marian was the heiress of Redstone Hall, for that concerns the dead; but heiress she was, not only of all that, but of all the lands and houses said to belong to the Raymond estate in Kentucky; not a cent of it was mine; and, rather than give it up, I married her without one particle of love—married her, too, when she did not know of her fortune, but supposed herself dependent upon me.”