It was a crushing blow to the entire family. Mrs. Temple shut herself up in her own room and would see no one for three days.
Then she sent for Philip, who seemed to have been suddenly transformed, and bore himself with a grave dignity that he had never worn before.
They were closeted for several hours; then they requested Mr. Temple to come to them. He obeyed the summons, but appeared like an old man, out of whom all hope and ambition had been crushed.
He tried many times to see his wife during those three, to him, endless days; but she would not admit him. He had sent her note after note that were pitiful in their expressions of remorse and appeals for forgiveness. His heart sank anew within him as he now entered her presence and noted how she had also changed. When he would have greeted her with his customary caress he was waved to a distant chair with an air of repulsion.
"I have come to the decision, Mr. Temple, that there is but one thing for me to do," she began, but without looking at him, "and that is to leave Washington immediately, seek some place of retirement and hide my shame as best I can."
"Don't Nell! Oh—don't!" cried the stricken man, cringing before her; "no breath of shame shall touch you, my darling; we will right everything."
"Right everything!" exclaimed the outraged woman, turning upon him in righteous indignation. "Do you presume to talk of righting such a wrong as mine at this late day? Do you imagine that the formal benediction of a clergyman would restore to me the self-respect of which you have deliberately robbed me, or wipe out the stigma that rests upon my child? I am not your wife—I have never been your wife—I have simply been, like a piece of merchandise, labeled with your name, and—I will never answer to it again."
"Oh, Nell! forgive—you break my heart!" groaned the wretched listener.
"Break your heart!" the almost maddened woman exclaimed with a bitter laugh. "Ah, me! one could scarce expect anything else—you think only of your heart, your suffering. It is all of a piece with the selfishness and recklessness that wrecked the life of that other woman, although the wrong done her is not to be compared with mine. She at least was a legal wife and her child legitimate, while I—oh, heavens!—to think what I am! what my child is!" and she threw out her clenched hands with a cry of mingled shame and agony that rang sharply through the room.
"Mother, hush! do not go over all that again!" Philip here interposed, with quiet authority. "There is no call for you to mourn any loss of self-respect, for you are in no way responsible for this wrong, and we will guard Minnie so tenderly that the world shall never have an opportunity to make her suffer a single pang. Of course," he continued with grave thoughtfulness, "things cannot go on as they are. If your decision—that you will not legally assume the name that you have hitherto borne—is irrevocable, we must arrange for as quiet a separation as possible, for Minnie's sake——"