“Oh; he piled presents enough on me. It’s the way of the men: the stingiest will do that. They like to think they’re such generous creatures. But let a poor woman count on it, and she’ll soon be wakened from her dream. ‘You married me for my money—deny it?’”
“Fearful!”
Jenny was leaning her forehead against the window sash, and looking vacantly out on the bay. Nelly observed her a moment, stopped suddenly in the tale of her troubles, and said, in another voice, “Jenny Crow, I believe you are laughing at me. It’s always the way with you. You can take nothing seriously.”
Jenny turned back to the room with a solemn face, and said, “Nellie, if you waited ten years for your husband, I suppose that he waited ten years for you.”
“I suppose he did.”
“And, if he is the same man as he was when he went away, I suppose his love is the same?”
“Then how could he say such things?”
“And, if he is the same, and his love is the same, isn’t it possible that somebody else is different?”
“Now, Jenny Crow, you are going to say it’s all my fault?”
“Not all, Nelly. Something has come between you.”