"You must remember how sudden our marriage was, Edith. My little girl had no time to learn to love me, or get used to me. Is it not right that I should leave her in peace until I shall have won her heart as well as her hand?"
Edith stared at him in wonder.
"Eliot Van Zandt, you are as blind as a bat!" she exclaimed, and darted away without another word.
But although she would not say another word to Eliot, she made up her mind to lecture Una.
So the first thing when Una opened her heavy eyes, she saw Edith sitting demurely in the big willow rocker by the bedside.
She burst out unceremoniously:
"You lazy girl, you have slept until breakfast was over, and your husband gone down-town. Poor boy! he waited and waited outside your door for you to wake, but you just dreamed on until he had to go. I told him to slip in and kiss you good-bye in your sleep, but he was afraid you would be angry. I do say, Una Van Zandt, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
Una was sitting up in bed very wide awake indeed now, a lovely picture of amazement and distress, with her loose, golden hair falling on her half-bare, white shoulders, her eyes dilated with wonder, her cheeks flushed from sleep.
"Oh, Edith, what have I done now? I don't know what you're talking about," she faltered.
"Don't you, Mistress Van Zandt? Listen, then: I'm talking about what a tyrant you are to my brother. Here you have been married to him almost a year and I don't believe you've ever given the poor boy as much as a kiss or one fond word. Do you think he is a stick or a stone, without any feeling, that you behave so heartlessly? I tell you it made me angry to see him this morning afraid to come inside this room to tell you good-bye. Don't you know he has a right to be in this room with you if he choose, only he is too afraid of you to assert himself? There is no other man on earth half so good and chivalrous as Eliot. Fancy Bryant being afraid to put his foot inside Sylvie's door. Why, they both would tell you it was all nonsense. You treat Eliot—"