Ernest Noel had gauged her quite correctly in asserting that she would be unwilling to be married simply, without the pomp and ceremony so dear to the feminine mind.
And, besides, though pained over her lover’s accident, she could not forgive in her heart the first cause of it.
She argued to herself that if he had not gone to the funeral he would not have been forced to the haste that had resulted so disastrously to himself and caused her so cruel a mortification.
“Whoever heard of anything so outré as a man’s going to a funeral in his wedding suit, and on the eve of his marriage?”
She cried to herself in a passion of jealous anger, hating poor Jessie for the sympathy he had shown and the few thoughts she had taken from the proud bride who had claimed all.
Despite her love for him, Cora longed to punish her lover for his fealty to Jessie’s memory.
She did not consider that he had already suffered enough. She desired his punishment to come through her, the chosen of his heart.
If any one had told her that the fire of his love that had burned so fiercely until that day in the park had cooled down into an indifference that he would not own even to his own heart, she could not have believed it.
They had had their lovers’ quarrels before, flirted with others before, kissed and made up always. She expected things to go as usual.
She had not punished him enough yet, and the refusal to marry him on his sick bed was a stroke that secretly pleased her very much. It would cause him such cruel pain he would realize her value more.