“You must; that is all there is about it,” returned her husband, positively. “If you can’t go into society and wear what you have, then you must stay at home this winter; and I do not think it would do you any harm for once, either.”
Mrs. Richards flushed angrily. When she saw her husband in this mood, she knew there was no turning him, and she would be obliged to submit to his edict.
“I’m sure I do not see what can have happened to make you so penurious all of a sudden,” she said, sullenly.
“Penurious! Oh, Ellen!”
He looked at her yearningly for a moment.
She was a handsome, distinguished-looking woman, and had been a very fond and tender wife during the first years of their married life; but unlimited indulgence, and constantly mingling in the fashionable world, had made her selfish and unfeeling.
“My dear,” he went on, after a moment, “why cannot you comfort me a little—give me a little sympathy in my trouble? My burden has been very hard to bear alone, and the worst of it has been that I was obliged to refuse your requests. You know that I am not penurious—that I never denied you anything that I could possibly grant you. Ellen, I wish you could be a little more kind to me than you have been of late.”
“I do not know anything about business matters; I could give you very little advice or comfort in that way,” she replied, coldly; and then she left him feeling very miserable, and in anything but a comfortable frame of mind herself, and not a little startled to know that they had been so near the brink of ruin as he had represented.
She returned to her own room, picking up the morning paper, which lay upon the hall table, on her way. Sitting down, she ran her eye carelessly over its columns, while her mind was busy planning some way to get along without her accustomed full purse, and “keep up appearances.”
Suddenly her glance was transfixed by a paragraph which sent sharp, prickling pains throughout her body, and every nerve quivered with excitement as she read: