“Not a bit of it!” declared Rube; “just the contrary! I fairly dote on the prospect of a wife who is going to cry hard and cut up dreadful when anything happens to a fellow. It kind of makes dying seem sort of easy. But, come, now; you’ve cried enough. Let me comfort you.”
“No, no!” cried Mell, shrinking away from him. “If you only knew, you would not want to comfort me. I do not deserve a single kind word from you. I am unworthy your regard. I am a weak woman, and a wicked one. Oh, Rube! I have not treated you right. That day at the picnic I was angry with some one else; I was piqued; I did not feel as I made you think I felt. I—that is—”
Here Mell broke down completely in her disjointed arraignment of self, thoroughly disconcerted by the young man’s change of countenance. His breath came quick, a dark cloud overspread his features, and he lost somewhat of his ruddy color.
“Do you mean, then, to say I was but a tool, and the whole thing a lie and a cheat?”
Rube’s thoughts sped as directly to their mark, as the well-aimed arrow from the bent bow.
“Don’t be so angry with me,” prayed Mell, “please don’t! You don’t know how much I have suffered over it. I say, at that time I thought I cared for some one else, and so I ought not, in all fairness, to have encouraged you; but, it is only since father died, that I have been able to see things in their true light. I have had a false standard of character, a false measure of worth, a false conception of human aims and human achievement. Out of the wretchedness of sleepless hours I have heard the under-tones of truth: Knowledge is great, but how much greater is goodness without knowledge than knowledge without goodness!”
Rube made no reply. He left her side, and, crossing the room, folded his arms and looked moodily out of the window. He was very simple in nature, somewhat slow, sometimes stupid; but loyal and true—true in great things, and no less true in small ones, and as open as the day.
Mell dried her eyes, and glanced at him anxiously. The worst part of her duty was now over. She began already to feel relieved; she began already to know just how she was going to feel in a few minutes more, the possessor of a conscience, void of offence before God and man. There’s nothing like it—a good conscience.
“This beats all!” soliloquized Rube, at the window; “I’ll be hanged if there’s enough solid space in a woman’s mind to peg a man’s hat on! Now, just as things have panned out all right for Devonhough, here’s a tombstone in my own graveyard!”
“Ha!” thought Mell, hearing, considering.