He found her in a tasteful gown, its heavy tassels almost sweeping the
floor, while her long, glossy hair, loosened from its confinement of
ribbon and comb, covered her neck and shoulders as she sat before the
fire always kindled in her room.
"How picturesque you look," he said, gayly.
"John," and Anna's voice was soft and pleasing, "was Charlie greatly
changed? Tell me, please."
"I was so young in the days when he came wooing that I hardly remember
how he used to look. I should not have known him, but my impression is
that he looks about as well as men of forty usually look."
"Not forty, John, only thirty-eight," Anna interposed.
"Well, thirty-eight, then. You remember his age remarkably well," John
said, laughingly, adding: "Did you once love him very much?"
"Yes," and Anna's voice faltered a little.
"Why didn't you marry him, then?"
John spoke excitedly, and the flush deepened on his cheek when Anna
answered meekly: "Why didn't you marry that poor girl?"
"Why didn't I?" and John started to his feet; then he continued: "Anna,
I tell you there's a heap of wrong for somebody to answer for, but it is
not you, and it is not me--it's--it's mother!" and John whispered the
word, as if fearful lest the proud, overbearing woman should hear.
"You are mistaken," Anna replied, "for as far as Charlie was concerned
father had more to do with it than mother. I've never seen him since. He
did marry another, but I've never quite believed that he forgot me."
Anna was talking now more to herself than to John, and Charlie, could he
have seen her, would have said she was not far from the narrow way which
leadeth unto life. To John her white face, irradiated with gleams of the
soft firelight, was as the face of an angel, and for a time he kept
silence before her, then suddenly exclaimed: "Anna, you are good, and so was she, so good, so pure, so artless, and
that made it hard to leave her, to give her up. Anna, do you know what
my mother wrote me? Listen, while I tell, then see if she is not to
blame. She cruelly reminded me that by my father's will all of us, save
you, were wholly dependent upon her, and said the moment I threw myself
away upon a low, vulgar, penniless girl, that moment she'd cast me off,
and I might earn my bread and hers as best I could. She said, too, my
sisters, Anna and all, sanctioned what she wrote, and your opinion had
more weight than all the rest."
"Oh, John, mother could not have so misconstrued my words. Surely my
note explained--I sent one in mother's letter."
"It never reached me," John said, while Anna sighed at this proof of her
mother's treachery.