“Do you know you are a very foolish girl sometimes? You cheat yourself and me out of happiness. You know down in your heart you never doubt my faith to you. What pleasure you get from pretending that you do, I can’t imagine. Come, be reasonable. Don’t cultivate a bad temper.”
“Hum! I should not think you would care what I did if I am unreasonable, bad tempered, foolish, suspicious—is that all?” mockingly. “I am glad to know your honest opinion of me. Doubtless, that cheap looking girl you were with last night is more amiable.”
“I imagine she is, Penelope,” Dick said, dejectedly and out of patience. “I have loved you devotedly, and I have meekly endured all your caprices, and if you want my devotion to end in this way I can only obey. If you ever regret it, Penelope, remember it was your own doing. You sent me away and I shall not return.”
And Richard, a very wretched young man indeed, walked hastily from the room.
Penelope never moved until she heard the hall door close. She thought that he would come back; he always had, but when she realized that he had really gone she was surprised and a little frightened.
Richard was very good-natured, but she felt she had gone just a little too far, and that if she wanted him back it would be necessary to humble herself.
She could not recall a time before that she had so forgotten herself, and allowed her temper to take such a hold of her. She could hardly recall all she had said, but she felt very small and ungenerous.
Now that she had lost him she reviewed her own conduct, and felt that, although Richard had done wrong, she had been unnecessarily harsh. He deserved some punishment to teach him not to err again, but she had been too unforgiving.
Wasn’t Dick always gentle and kind to her, and did he not always manfully and tenderly overlook her little mistakes and pettishness? Besides, was she not sure he loved her better than any girl in the world? Then why should she be jealous if he amused himself with those other women who are always so ready to “draw men on.”
A woman in love always reproaches herself with being the cause of every lover’s jar.