“If I had known this I would not have married you!”
“If you married me with mercenary motives you deserve to be disappointed,” was the cold reply of her liege lord, and, as may be supposed, the honeymoon did not proceed very smoothly after that.
Willie kept on at the store, the children at school, and Pansy at the factory. She had not expected anything else, she told her mother, with some slight bitterness, when she half apologized to her for the necessity of her keeping on at work.
She resented with silent jealousy her mother’s marriage to this stern, hard man, so unlike her own father, who had been so gentle and loving, and the breach between her heart and her mother’s grew wider still as days passed on and brought the cold, dark days of winter.
For one day one of the little children had unwittingly let out a secret that Pansy had adjured her to keep. It was the fact that Norman Wylde had several times visited the house during Mrs. Finley’s absence on her wedding tour.
There had been a scene between mother and daughter, harsh reproaches and upbraidings, answered first by tears, then by girlish resentment.
“I had as much right to deceive you as you had to run away and marry that horrid man!” the girl cried, with flashing eyes.
Then Mrs. Finley had so far forgotten love and dignity as to strike her rebellious daughter—slapping both cheeks soundly, and threatening something of the same kind unless Pansy broke off with Norman Wylde.
“He is gone to England,” the girl answered sullenly, and the mother prayed in secret that he might never return, unwitting of the terrible interest Pansy had in the absentee.
So the long winter days wore away, and Pansy’s companions at the factory began to remark a great change in the young girl. Her cheeks had grown pale and wan, and her eyes dim, as if from constant tears. Her light, dancing step had become heavy and dragging, and she no longer seemed to care about her personal appearance, for her dresses were cheap and ill-fitting, and she was always shivering with cold, although constantly wrapped in a thick shawl. The gay girls at the factory often teased her about her chilliness, and told her she must be going into a consumption.