“Oh, how could he be totally false? He has never breathed one word of all this to me. If he had I should have freely confided in all of you. You know I have made no secret of my troubles,” sighed Rosalind.
“Only wait till papa comes and he will find a way, I’m sure, to break the marriage and bring poor Charley back to his senses,” declared Marie, between tears and anger.
CHAPTER XXV.
A FAIR BRIDE.
Charley Bonair had indeed gone away from his sisters in an angry mood, stung by their reproaches and embittered by their sharp abuse of his wife, the scheming nobody, as they did not scruple to call her to his face.
He also, in the fullness of his happiness, had sent off a telegram to his father before he had carried his news up to Bonair, and it ran very simply:
“Rosalind and I broke off recently, and I have to-day married another girl who has the truest heart and fairest face in the world, so that I confidently hope for your forgiveness and your blessing.”
Charley thought this was a masterly stroke, the prompt confession of his mésalliance, and hoped much from it, little dreaming of the malicious message that followed it from his sisters, entreating Senator Bonair to return home and do something or other to Charley in punishment for the disgrace he had brought on the family, marrying a scheming little actress, an out-and-out nobody, and jilting his beautiful promised bride.
In their anger, the sisters did not care to recall the praises they had bestowed on Berry for her beauty and her clever acting, nor the pity they had felt for her after the accident that so nearly ended her life. Her unparalleled impudence in marrying Charley because he asked her and because she loved him blotted out everything else in her favor.
But Charley, returning to the cottage, basked in the smiles of his charming bride, and resolutely put dull care behind him.
It is wonderful what miracles love can work in a day!