Months thus passed away, Colonel Ivey taking his Sunday dinner with the mother and her children at first, and then calling oftener and oftener, until one night he called Will and Pearl to him and told them that he had asked their mother to become his wife, and that she had said that she would.
It made them happy, for they were glad to see joy in the face of their dearly loved mother, and soon after Mrs. Ruby Raymond became Mrs. Richard Ivey.
It was a quiet wedding in the cosey home, and then into the grand mansion of Colonel Ivey the mother and her children moved, and sunshine seemed to brighten all their pathway through life; but alas! who can see into the future, who can tell how far beyond the sunshine lie the shadows that must fall upon our lives, shutting out all brightness, encircling them with gloom as black as the grave, and far more cruel.
[CHAPTER IX.—Phantoms of the Past.]
T was a pleasant night and Mrs. Richard Ivey sat alone in the handsome library of her elegant country house on the sea-shore, for it was the summer time.
Her face had lost its look of haunting care, and her cheeks glowed with health, and she appeared to be happy once more.
Still there were phantoms of the past that would rise before her and they would not go down at her bidding.
She recalled her first love, noble-hearted, honest Kent Lomax, from whom she had fled to become the wife of a man who had proved himself a wretch, a villain.