She took it between her fingers as if it were a dead thing, and thought at the moment that it weighed a pound at the least. And this was Ellen Thornton! Then she thought how old-fashioned her dress looked, and for a moment she felt glad that she had gotten the picture back. Another revulsion of feeling as she looked upon the torn envelope. What would she not suffer for the hope, the uncertainty, she had clung to when she tore that paper half an hour ago?
If only the doctors could have said “possibly,” not “probably;” perhaps that was what they meant, and not “probably,” she repeated. Doctors are so clumsy—especially some—and they do so exaggerate in order to magnify the importance of their case, and for a moment she took unction in such logic.
Suddenly a new thought took possession. The baron—“where did he come in?” as he himself would have expressed it, and she half smiled at the grotesqueness of the thought. Was she not married? and did she not owe him allegiance as a woman of honor? If she had told him all that her soul held in keeping for another, would he have made her the Baroness Von Eulaw?—Very likely, but she was not prepared to believe it. She had no right to hold him responsible for offenses against her while she was holding perfidy to her heart, and she marveled that she had failed to make this argument a shield against the shafts of her great sorrow and her almost greater chagrin.
She would destroy both the letter and the picture, and put away all thought of the unhappy occurrence. But, examining the picture again, she discovered two little punctures just through the pupils of the shadowy eyes, and she thought and queried for the cause of such an accident.
Finally she concluded that her old lover had made them inadvertently in fastening the picture to his wall or mirror frame, and so, pressing her lips warmly to the tiny wounds on the unconscious paper, where she fancied his fingers had rested, she locked both the photo and letter in her desk, and, just as daylight broke, long after the clanging of the locks had ceased and the brightness was withdrawn, she braided her hair as she had worn it so many years ago when the image was made, and, with a long look in the mirror to find a trace of her old self, she turned away to her couch, and disposed herself for an hour of sleep.
But the last among her sea of speculations was this: “I wonder who made those pin-holes in my eyes!”
CHAPTER XIV.
“In the name of God, take heed.”
The Hod-Carriers’ Union and Mortar-Mixers’ Protective Association, of San Francisco, adopted a resolution in February, 1894, to fix the rate of wages of its members at $3.00 per day, and admitting no new members for a period of one year. The immediate cause of this resolution was the letting, by certain capitalists, of contracts for the construction of several blocks of buildings on Market Street, including the new post-office building.
Phelim Rafferty, in proposing the resolution, said:
“The owners and the contractors, Mr. Prisident and gentlemen, are min of large means, sor, yit they propose to pay us, the sons of honest toil, sor, widout whose brawny muscles they could not build at all, sor, they propose to pay us a beggarly $2.00 a day, sor. Why, the min in the public schools who taich the pianny to our gurls, sor, recaive more nor that! Now, sor, if we pass this risolution we put our wages to $3.00 a day, and hould them there. We have the mortal cinch on the contractors, sor, for if any mimber of our union works for less than $3.00 we’ll expel him; and by passin’ this risolution we’ll keep min from the East away, and keep the mimbership in San Francisco shmall, and we’ll be sure of a job.