"Oh! colder than the wind that freezes

Founts, that but now in sunshine play'd,

Is that congealing pang which seizes

The trusting bosom when betray'd."--Moore.

Four months had elapsed since the honeymoon at the White Rose Tavern,

and Anna was living at Waltham with her mother who grew more fretful

and complaining every day. The marriage was still the secret of Anna

and Sanderson. The honeymoon at the White Rose had been prolonged to a

week, but no suspicion had entered the minds of Mrs. Moore or Mrs.

Standish Tremont, thanks to Sanderson's skill in sending fictitious

telegrams, aided by so skilled an accomplice as the "Rev." John Langdon.

Week after week, Anna had yielded to Sanderson's entreaties and kept

her marriage a secret from her mother. At first he had sent her

remittances of money with frequent regularity, but, lately, they had

begun to fall off, his letters were less frequent, shorter and more

reserved in tone, and the burden of it all was crushing the youth out

of the girl and breaking her spirit. She had grown to look like some

great sorrowful-eyed Madonna, and her beauty had in it more of the

spiritual quality of an angel than of a woman. As the spring came on,

and the days grew longer she looked like one on whom the hand of death

had been laid.

Her friends noticed this, but not her mother, who was so engrossed with

her own privations, that she had no time or inclination for anything

else.

"Anna, Anna, to think of our coming to this!" she would wail a dozen

times a day--or, "Anna, I can't stand it another minute," and she would

burst into paroxysms of grief, from which nothing could arouse her, and

utterly exhausted by her own emotions, which were chiefly regret and

self-pity, she would sink off to sleep. Anna had no difficulty in

accounting to her mother for the extra comforts with which Lennox

Sanderson's money supplied them. Mrs. Standish Tremont sometimes sent

checks and Mrs. Moore never bothered about the source, so long as the

luxuries were forthcoming.

"Is there no more Kumyss, Anna?" she asked one day.

"No, mother."

"Then why did you neglect to order it?"

The girl's face grew red. "There was no money to pay for it, mother.

I am so sorry."

"And does Frances Tremont neglect us in this way? When we were both

girls, it was quite the other way. My father practically adopted

Frances Tremont. She was married from our house. But you see, Anna,

she made a better marriage than I. Oh, why was your father so

reckless? I warned him not to speculate in the rash way he was

accustomed to doing, but he would never take my advice. If he had, we

would not be as we are now." And again the poor lady was overcome with

her own sorrows.




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