Mrs. Dalrymple’s dark head instantly crested itself with the pride Cora knew so well, and she dared not find further fault.
So Cora, repulsed, could only vent her rage in secret, and bitter enough it was, though mixed with one sweet drop of triumph in the thought that never again would their eyes rest on Jessie’s sweet face.
“Let them search and search, but never again will their eyes be gladdened by her return. Let them go on believing that Cora Ellyson is sorry she sent her into exile that night. Ha, ha!” and a laugh that was fiendish in its cruel triumph rang out upon the stillness of the room. She was in a retrospective mood, and as she shook loose the braids of dark hair over her shoulder, she gazed fixedly at her pallid face in the long mirror, muttering:
“Yet Frank Laurier doesn’t love me. How mortifying to marry a man who shrinks from one with secret aversion! Yet I will not turn back. I will marry him if only to punish him for his perfidy! And if he withholds love then he shall feel to the core of his heart what it is to trample on a woman’s love!”
Stung to fury by the indifference he could not hide, Cora was filled with the venom of “a woman scorned.”
I will teach him to play with a rattlesnake’s tongue,
I will teach him the tiger to rob of its young,
I will teach him ’twere better a man were unborn
If the love of a proud-hearted woman he scorn.
The next day, after fitting out his manly little nephews in handsome new clothing, Leon Dalrymple took them to their future home, where they met a cordial welcome from the woman who was soon to be their uncle’s wife again.