“I am so glad,” was Rudolph’s exclamation, and he was proceeding further to express his malicious joy, when Ben cut him short by saying:
“It don’t look well to rejoice over anybody’s downfall, though I’m none too friendly to the gal, I shan’t hear her berated, and you may as well quit.”
On ordinary occasions, Rudolph would have resented any attempt at restraint, but he was too much intoxicated now fully to realize anything, and staring vacantly at Ben, he made no reply, but ere long fell asleep, dozing in his chair for several hours. Then, with faculties somewhat brightened, he announced his intention of leaving. With an immense degree of satisfaction Ben watched him as he went slowly down the avenue, saying to himself:
“Poor drunken critter, he’s disappointed, I s’pose, in not gettin’ revenge his own way; but I don’t blame her much for givin’ him the mitten. Wouldn’t they have scratched each other’s eyes out, if they’d come together! Better be as ’tis—she a nervous old maid, and he in a drunkard’s grave, where he will be mighty soon—the bloat!” and having finished his soliloquy, Ben returned again to his music.
Meantime, in a most unenviable frame of mind, Isabel was chiding her mother for doing everything wrong, and bewailing her own sad fate:
“Oh, why didn’t I stay at home,” she said; “and so not have become the fright I know I am?”
It was in vain that her mother made her feel thankful that her life was spared. Isabel did not care for that. She thought only of her lost teeth, her disjointed nose, and ugly scar, and turning her face to the wall she was wishing she could die, when the woman of the house came in, telling her “some friends were there from Kentucky.”
“Who are they?” she asked; but ere the woman could reply, a sweet voice said:
“It’s me, and all of us;” and Alice’s little hands were tenderly pressed to Isabel’s feverish brow.
Then, indeed, the haughty girl wept aloud, for she knew she did not deserve this kindness either from Alice or Marian, the latter of whom soon came in, greeting her as pleasantly as if she had never received an injury from her hands. Frederic, too, was perfectly self-possessed, expressing his sympathy for her misfortune, and with these kind friends to cheer her sick room, Isabel recovered in a measure her former cheerfulness. But there was evidently something resting heavily upon her mind, and that night, when alone with Frederic and Marian, she confessed to them her wickedness in opening the letter, and sending it back with so cruel a message.