"
"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.
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