“Our cab is ready. We will go home now,” he said, returning, and leading her out.
The cab rolled lightly over the smooth streets, and Viola began to realize all at once the change that was coming into her own life; but she did not repent her rash marriage. In her bitter mood she would have sacrificed her own life rather than have foregone to-morrow’s triumph.
They were quite silent for a few minutes; then her husband said, kindly:
“Of course you realize, Viola, that the home to which you are going is very different from the luxurious one you have left? We live in a tiny cottage on Capitol Hill, and my invalid mother and my orphan cousin, little Mae Sweetland, are dependent on me for support. But my mother will soon have a pension. My father was a soldier, a captain in the Federal Army, though while we had a modest competence, mother never wished for a pension, but the failure of a bank left us penniless, and I had to leave West Point, where I was being educated, to come home and take up journalistic work to support our helpless family. But mother will receive her pension soon, with back pay, so that our home will be more comfortable then, and I can go away to Cuba with an easy mind.”
Viola had listened attentively, and now she answered:
“And I shall have my own fortune, too, so I shall not lack for the luxury to which I have been used.”
“Not a word against my going to Cuba,” thought the handsome young husband, with a heavy heart.
But he could not blame her in the least. She had not professed any regard for him; she had only accepted him in preference to the other alternative—George Merrington—“silly, lovesick boy,” as she had contemptuously termed him.
Besides, he had told her frankly that he would go to Cuba after their marriage. Perhaps that fact had turned the balance in his favor and made her accept his offer.
“Here we are!” he said, cheerfully, as the cab stopped before a little white cottage inclosed in a grassy plot. “It is eleven o’clock, yet I see a light in the parlor window. They are waiting up for me, dear mother and little Mae.”