“—If he says he never loved me he lies. He did, or why did he marry me? I never asked him to. He teased me into it, saying my saucy ways had bewitched him. A month after, it was common ways, rude ways, such ways as he wouldn’t have in a wife. That’s the kind of man he is.”
“—One thing I will say of him. He don’t pay no heed to women. He’s too busy, I guess. He don’t seem to think of anything but to get along, and he does get along remarkable. I’m awful proud of him. He’s taken to defending criminals lately. They almost all get off.”
“—He pays me but a pittance. How can I look like anything, or hold my head up with the ladies here if I cannot get enough together to buy me a new fall hat. I will not go to church looking like a farmer’s wife, if I haven’t any education or any manners. I’m as good as anybody here if they but knew it, and deserve to dress as well. He must give me more money.”
“—No, he shan’t give me a cent more. If I can’t go to church I will stay at home. He shan’t say I stood in his way of becoming a great man. He is too good for me. I saw it today when he got up in the court to speak. I was there with a thick veil over my face, for I was determined to know whether he was as smart as folks say or not. And he just is! Oh, how beautiful he did look, and how everybody held their breaths while he was speaking! I felt like jumping up and saying: ‘This is my husband; we were married three years ago.’ Wouldn’t I have raised a rumpus if I had! I guess the poor man he was pleading for would not have been remembered very long after that. My husband! the thought makes me laugh. No other woman can call him that, anyhow. He is mine, mine, mine, and I mean he shall stay so.”
“—I feel awful blue tonight. I have been thinking about those Hildreths. How they would like to have me dead! And so would Tremont, though he don’t say nothing. I like to call him Tremont; it makes me feel as if he belonged to me. What if that wicked Gouverneur Hildreth should know I lived so much alone? I don’t believe he would stop at killing me! And my husband! He is equal to telling him I have no protector. Oh, what a dreadful wickedness it is in me to put that down on paper! It isn’t so—it isn’t so; my husband wouldn’t do me any harm if he could. If ever I’m found dead in my bed, it will be the work of that Toledo man and of nobody else.”
“—I hope I am going to have some comfort now. Tremont has begun to pay me more money. He had to. He isn’t a poor man any more, and when he moves into his big house, I am going to move into a certain little cottage I have found, just around the corner. If I can’t have no other pleasures, I will at least have a kitchen I can call my own, and a parlor too. What if there don’t no company come to it; they would if they knew. I’ve just heard from Adelaide; she says Craik is getting to be a big boy, and is so smart.”
“—What’s the use of having a home? I declare I feel just like breaking down and crying. I don’t want company: if women folks, they’re always talking about their husbands and children; and if men, they’re always saying: ‘My wife’s this, and my wife’s that.’ But I do want him. It’s my right; what if I couldn’t say three words to him that was agreeable, I could look at him and think: ‘This splendid gentleman is my husband, I ain’t so much alone in the world as folks think.’ I’ll put on my bonnet and run down the street. Perhaps I’ll see him sitting in the clubhouse window!”
“Evening.—I hate him. He has a hard, cruel, wicked heart. When I got to the clubhouse window he was sitting there, so I just went walking by, and he saw me and came out and hustled me away with terrible words, saying he wouldn’t have me hanging round where he was; that I had promised not to bother him, and that I must keep my word, or he would see me—he didn’t say where, but it’s easy enough to guess. So—so! he thinks he’ll put an end to my coming to see him, does he? Well, perhaps he can; but if he does, he shall pay for it by coming to see me. I’ll not sit day in and day out alone without the glimpse of a face I love, not while I have a husband in the same town with me. He shall come, if it is only for a moment each day, or I’ll dare everything and tell the world I am his wife.”
“—He had to consent! Meek as I have been, he knows it won’t do to rouse me too much. So today he came in to dinner, and he had to acknowledge it was a good one. Oh, how I did feel when I saw his face on the other side of the table! I didn’t know whether I hated him or loved him. But I am sure now I hated him, for he scarcely spoke to me all the time he was eating, and when he was through, he went away just as a stranger would have done. He means to act like a boarder, and, goodness me,
