Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/53

repeat; but thus far she admitted—that the estrangement was fundamentally owing to Mr, Millborne haying sought her out and married her.

“And why did he seek you out—and why were you. obliged to marry him?” asked the distressed girl. Then the evidences picced themaelves together in her acute mind, and, her color gradually rising, she asked her mother if what they pointed to was indeed the fact. Her mother admitted that it was.

A finsh of mortification succeeded to the flush of shame upon the young woman's face. How could a scrupulously correet clergyman and lover like Mr. Cope ask her to be his wife after this discovery of her irregular birth? She covered her eyes with her hands in a silent despair.

In the presence of Mr. Millborne they at first suppressed their anguish. But by-and-by their feelings got the better of them, and when he was asleep in his chair after dinner, Mrs, Miliborne’s irritation broke out, The imbittered Frances joined her in reproaching the man who had come as the spectre to their intended feast of Hymen, and turned its promise to ghastly failure.

“Why were you so weak, mother, as to admit such an enemy to your house—one so obviously your evil genius—mueh Jess accept him aa a husband, after so long? If you had only told me all, I could have advised you better! But I suppose I have no right to reproach him, bitter as I feel, and even though he has blighted my life forever !”

“Frances, I did hold out; I saw it wag a mistake to have any more to say to a man who had been such an unmitigated curse to me. But he would not listen; he kept on about his conacience and mine till I was bewildered, and said, ‘Yes.’... Bringing us away from a quiet town where we were known and respected—