"
"Do you mean," he asked, very gravely," that you really wish that?"
"No," I said, "I don't mean it," for his husky, troubled voice
brought me to my senses. "All I mean is, that I love you so dearly,
and you keep my heart feeling so hungry and restless; and then you
went and brought your father and sister here and never asked me if I
should like it; and you crowded mother out, and she lives all alone,
and it isn't right! I always said that whoever married me had got to
marry mother, and I never dreamed that you would disappoint me so!"
"Will you stop crying, and listen to me?" he said.
But I could not stop. The floods of the great deep were broken up at
last, and I had to cry. If I could have told my troubles to some one
I could thus have found vent for them, but there was no one to whom I
had a right to speak of my husband.
Ernest walked up and down in silence. Oh, if I could have cried on
his breast, and felt that he loved and pitied me!
At last, as I grew quieter, he came and sat by me.
"This has come upon me like a thunderclap," he said. "I did not know
I kept your heart hungry. I did not know you wished your mother to
live with us. And I took it for granted that my wife, with her
high-toned, heroic character, would sustain me in every duty, and
welcome my father and sister to our home. I do not know what I can do
now.
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