"She is a perfect lady, and her language is beyond criticism—she is fit to be the wife of any peer."
"Gracious! Sadie, how you annoy me!" ejaculated Mrs. Farnum, angrily. "Just think of her antecedents."
"Well, the girl is not to blame if her father was a scamp, and should not be made to suffer for his sins," responded her daughter, who was not naturally bad, and but for her mother's influence, would even now have been won to a better disposition by Virgie's sweetness.
"What rank folly you are talking!" retorted her mother. "No girl has a right to marry a respectable man with such a stain on her name."
"Perhaps she does not know anything about her father's crime."
"Pshaw! She was fifteen years old when they had to flee from San Francisco; she could not help knowing that something was wrong, and as she grew older she could not fail to understand it. From the way you talk it is evident that you yourself have fallen in love with the woman who has cheated you out of your husband."
"Perhaps I have, mamma," Sadie answered, with a spice of defiance and wickedly taking pleasure in working her mother up to a certain pitch. "She looked so pretty just now—she has the loveliest complexion, just clear red and white, with such dark blue eyes that they seem almost black when she is animated, and such pretty waving brown hair, while her features are pure and delicate Her taste, too, is exquisite—her dress was just the right shade to set off her clear skin; she had the daintiest little matron's cap on her head—real thread, too—while a handful of blush-roses in her belt made her look too lovely for anything."
"Do hush, Sadie; you irritate me beyond endurance; one would think that you were only too ready to renounce all your hopes to this plebeian who has stolen your lover," and Mrs. Farnum turned upon her daughter as if ready to shake her for her folly.
"Mamma!" she cried, passionately, and bursting into tears, for she had been working herself up as well, "when I am away from her I hate her for having won him from me, and I am almost ready to do anything desperate; but when I am with her she disarms me; there is something about the girl that almost makes me love her. If you could have seen her this morning, she looked so proud and happy when I praised the baby."
"Sadie Farnum, I do believe you are becoming demented! Here is poor Lady Linton almost heart-broken over her brother's mesalliance, his mother lies at death's door on account of the excitement caused by it, while you, who ought to be the most interested party of all, are about to turn traitress and go over to the enemy just because of a foolish sentimentality for this doll-faced girl. I declare, I have no patience with you."