“Don’t be so hot, Kit. You have no idea what a woman’s mind is. She thought you, of course, a perfect angel, and herself not good enough to wipe your shoes. She was always humble, as you know; and that tyrant of a woman must have beaten into her poor head a bitter sense of her own defects. It is only natural, she would think, that this great wonder of a man should want some one better than poor me. And when some villain laid before her some strong evidence, we know not what, she would say to herself—‘It is as I thought. I will not trouble him to explain. I will leave him for a while, and perhaps his love will return, when he has lost me. With this in my heart, I could not bear to look at him, and know all the while he was longing to be rid of me. I will have no scene, which would only make him think even less of me than he does.’ And so she would go, without caring where.”
“Possibly, aunt, some women might have done so. But not Kitty. She felt to her heart my affection for her; and she trusted me, as I trusted her. Do you suppose that if what you say had even seemed possible to me, I should have remained, as I have done, waiting for some news of her. I should have rushed up to every one, who had any motive for deceiving her, and taken them by the throat, and wrung their wicked, murderous lies out. No, it is something much worse than that. If Kitty had left me in petulance, would she have written these last words, would she have called me her ‘darling Kit’? See what I found this morning.”
“That proves nothing,” resumed my aunt, when I had shown her my Prayer-book, and we had discussed that matter; “she may very well have relented, at the last moment, and written that to you.”
“Then would she have taken all our money? Was that the way to cure my jealousy, and bring me back to her in penitence? She had a right to the money, because you put it into her own hand. But I am astonished at her taking it.”
Miss Parslow was even more astonished, when I told her that part of the tale, which I had begged Uncle Corny not to do. It grieved me that she should ever hear of it; but she certainly had the right to know.
“Perhaps you told her in so many words that you meant it entirely for herself,” I suggested, hoping that it might be so; for, little as I cared for that trumpery loss, I was cut to the quick that my wife should have inflicted it; “Kitty must have believed it her own, or she never would have touched it.”
“I said nothing of the kind,” my aunt replied indignantly; “I gave it to her, but I meant it for you—that is to say conjointly. Her taking it was robbery, and nothing else.”
I laughed a little at these words, which I had heard from other quarters. That my Kitty should be called a robber, seemed a little too absurd. But I could not be angry in the teeth of facts, at any rate with the donor.