"She should have thought of that before," Bessie said. "Mama should not have been so sly and underhand--"
"Bessie! Bessie! You can't mean what you say."
"I mean every word of it. Pretending to dislike him! Pretending to keep out of his way!"
"Deleah, I have told your sister I nearly died of astonishment when he spoke to me. The idea had never entered my head." Poor Mrs. Day leant the head upon her hand and hid her face, in her misery.
"Bessie, you are not to bully mama. Do be silent. Don't mind her, mama. What did you say to him?"
"Such nonsense!" cried the irrepressible Bessie. "You'll have to say! and he isn't in any doubt about it. He came to me and told me he was going to be my papa. I could have felled him to the earth when he said it! But I did not. I said 'You may be a papa to me a hundred times over, I will never be a daughter to you. Never! Never! Never!'"
"But if mama did this horrible thing, you'd have to be his daughter--you'd have to live in his house--"
"I'd live there, but I'd make it warm for him!" Bessie cried; and then her feelings becoming too much for her, she dashed from the room, and slammed the door behind her.
Deleah, left alone with her mother, did her best to strengthen her. "Never mind her, mama. Do not think of any of us in this; think of yourself alone. You could never do it."
"Bessie and he would fight like cat and dog," Mrs. Day said. "They are always fighting now. She says such things to him, and he to her! Environment has told on Bessie. She says things no lady should say. My life would be unbearable."
"It is not to be thought of for a moment."
"But there are the debts I cannot pay. There is poor Bernard. I ought to do it, Deleah. I know I ought. But I have had miseries enough."
When Deleah left her, Mrs. Day still sat a huddled heap upon the sofa. "I have had miseries enough," she repeated; and upon that text she spoke to herself--going over in faithful detail the troubles she had known--vainest and most useless occupation in which a woman can indulge.
Her orphaned, dependent childhood; her marriage. It had been loveless on her part, but she had cared a little, believing that love on her husband's part would suffice. Was it love, ever at all? Is love possible where tenderness, courtesy, consideration do not exist? Time going on, daily she had suffered his incivility, the despite he did to her sense of what was due to her as his wife, the mother of his children, the mistress of his home. Habit, and love for her children, had made life tolerable. But for twenty years he and she had lived side by side in the outward union of inwardly divided minds.