Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/71

Rh 'No. She may very well, when young, have looked rather nice.'

'Well, then!' was Mrs. Guy's sharp comment and fresh triumph.

'You mean it was a present? That's just what he so dislikes the idea of her having received—a present from an admirer capable of going such lengths.'

'Because she wouldn't have taken it for nothing? Speriamo—that she wasn't a brute. The "length "her admirer went was the length of a whole row. Let us hope she was just a little kind!'

'Well,' Charlotte went on, 'that she was "kind" might seem to be shown by the fact that neither her husband, nor his son, nor I, his niece, knew or dreamed of her possessing anything so precious; by her having kept the gift all the rest of her life beyond discovery—out of sight and protected from suspicion.'

'As if, you mean'—Mrs. Guy was quick—'she had been wedded to it and yet was ashamed of it? Fancy,' she laughed while she manipulated the rare beads, 'being ashamed of these!'

'But you see she had married a clergyman.'

'Yes, she must have been "rum." But at any rate he had married her. What did he suppose?'

'Why, that she had never been of the sort by whom such offerings are encouraged.'

'Ah, my dear, the sort by whom they are not!' But Mrs. Guy caught herself up. 'And her stepson thought the same?'

'Overwhelmingly.'

'Was he, then, if only her stepson'

'So fond of her as that comes to? Yes; he had never known, consciously, his real mother, and, without children of her own, she was very patient and nice with him. And I liked her so,' the girl pursued, 'that at the end of ten years, in so strange a manner, to "give her away"'