Family Pride

"'Not by sight, no,' he said. 'She was only here a few days before she died. I've heard she was very winsome and that there was a scandal of some kind mixed up with her.'

"I would not ask him any more; and without any wrong to you, my wife, I confess that my tears dropped upon the turf under which I knew Genevra lay."

"I am glad they did; I should hate you if you had not cried," Katie exclaimed, her voice more natural than it had been since the great shock came, and her own tears falling fast to the memory of Genevra, whose grave she had sat upon with Wilford standing near.

A buried wife was not so dreadful to contemplate as a wife divorced but living still, and Katy's heart did not beat with quite so heavy throbs of fear and shame as it had at first. But it was very sore with the feeling that to her almost as great a wrong had been done as to Genevra, for had he not deceived her from the very first, he and his mother, who had been the terror of Genevra's life as she was the bane of Katy's.

"Do you forgive me, Katy? Do you love me as well as ever?" Wilford asked, stooping down to kiss her, but Katy drew her face away and did not answer then.

She did not know herself just how she felt toward him. He did not seem just like the husband she had trusted in so blindly. It would take a long time to forget that another head than hers had lain upon his bosom, and it would take longer yet to blot out the memory of the complaining words uttered to his mother. She had never thought he could do that, never dreamed of such a thing, knowing that she would sooner have parted with her right hand than have complained of him. Her idol had fallen in more respects than one, and the heart it had bruised in the fall refused at once to gather the shattered pieces up and call them good as new. She was not obstinate, she was not sulky, as Wilford began to fancy. She was only stunned and could not rally at his bidding. He had confessed the whole, keeping nothing back, and he felt that Katy was unjust not to acknowledge his magnanimity and restore him to her favor. Again he asked forgiveness, again bent down to kiss her, but Katy answered: "Not yet, Wilford, not till I feel all right toward you. A wife's kiss should be sincere."