"Pah! don't try to melt me with your crying. I never believed in it.
Women can cry at any moment."
There was a convulsive motion of Mrs. Elliott's head as she turned quickly away, and a choking sound in her throat. She remained silent, ten minutes passed, when her husband said in a firm voice,
"Anna, I'm going to break up."
Mrs. Elliott glanced around with a startled air.
"It's true, just what I say—your father may think that I'm going to make a slave of myself to support you, but he's mistaken. He's refused to help me in my business one single copper, though he's able enough. And now I've taken my resolution. You can go back to him as quick as you like."
Before the brutal husband had half finished the sentence, his wife was on her feet, with a cheek deadly pale, and eyes almost starting from her head. Thomas Elliott was her husband and the father of her babe, and as such she had loved him with a far deeper love than he had deserved. This had caused her to bear with coldness and neglect, and even positive unkindness without a complaint. Sacredly had she kept from her mother even a hint of the truth. Thus had she gone on almost from the first; for only a few months elapsed before she discovered that her image was dim on her husband's heart.
"You needn't stand there staring at me like one moon-struck"—he said, with bitter sarcasm and a curl of the lip. "What I say is the truth. I'm going to give up, and you've got to go home to them that are more able to support you than I am; and who have a better right, too, I'm thinking."
There was something so heartless and chilling in the words and manner of her husband, that Mrs. Elliott made no attempt to reply. Covering her face with her hands, she sunk back into the chair from which she had risen, more deeply miserable than she had ever been in her life. From this state she was aroused by the imperative question,
"Anna, what do you intend doing?"
"That is for you to say"—was her murmured reply.