“No matter how good the girl might have been?”
There was something defiant—almost threatening—in her tone. Horace was annoyed—and he showed it when he spoke.
“My mother would have respected the girl, without ceasing to respect herself,” he said. “My mother would have remembered what was due to the family name.”
“And she would have said, No?”
“She would have said, No.”
“Ah!”
There was an undertone of angry contempt in the exclamation which made Horace start. “What is the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she answered, and took up her embroidery again. There he sat at her side, anxiously looking at her—his hope in the future centered in his marriage! In a week more, if she chose, she might enter that ancient family of which he had spoken so proudly, as his wife. “Oh!” she thought, “if I didn’t love him! if I had only his merciless mother to think of!”
Uneasily conscious of some estrangement between them, Horace spoke again. “Surely I have not offended you?” he said.
She turned toward him once more. The work dropped unheeded on her lap. Her grand eyes softened into tenderness. A smile trembled sadly on her delicate lips. She laid one hand caressingly on his shoulder. All the beauty of her voice lent its charm to the next words that she said to him. The woman’s heart hungered in its misery for the comfort that could only come from his lips.