"Hereafter, you can't pretend
ignorance. For I'll at least be revenged. She failed utterly to trap him
into marriage when she was a poor girl, and--"
"Before you go any further," said I coldly, "let me set you right. My wife
was at one time engaged to your husband's brother, but--"
"Tom?" she interrupted. And her laugh made me bite my lip. "So she told you
that! I don't see how she dared. Why, everybody knows that she and Mowbray
were engaged, and that he broke it off to marry me."
All in an instant everything that had been confused in my affairs at
home and down town became clear. I understood why I had been pursued
relentlessly in Wall Street; why I had been unable to make the least
impression on the barriers between Anita and myself. You will imagine that
some terrible emotion at once dominated me. But this is not a romance;
only the veracious chronicle of certain human beings. My first emotion
was--relief that it was not Tom Langdon. "I ought to have known she
couldn't care for _him_," said I to myself. I, contending with Tom
Langdon for a woman's love had always made me shrink. But Mowbray--that
was vastly different. My respect for myself and for Anita rose.
"No," said I to Mrs.
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