From the Socialist point of view, she
was attacked as a blatant scold who had made her husband's life
intolerable, until he had been rescued by the beautiful woman
who was now his wife. By the conservative press, she was timidly
defended, damned by faint praise and humiliated by pity.
The children, growing rapidly, were beginning to feel the mother's
position. In the public schools, the story of her life and desertion
by her husband had tipped the tongues of the spiteful with poison,
and Lucy had come home more than once trying to conceal from her
mother the hurt of her sensitive child's soul.
Morris King, now the distinguished Governor-elect, hastened to
press his suit.
Her faithful knight, he was now laying lovingly at her feet the
tribute of a powerful man's life.
To every worldly view of her position and future his suit was
a temptation well nigh resistless. His love had stood the test of
years. He would worship her as his wife as he had worshiped her
as his ideal. She knew this by an intuition as unerring as that by
which she knew she could never love him as she loved Gordon. And
yet she felt a singular dependence on him, and a tender gratitude
for the protection he had given her life.
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