“All.”

An expression of pain and disappointment crossed his face; he ground his teeth fiercely.

“Don’t marry her, father; you will kill me if you do!”

“Must you alone have license?”

He resumed his cigar, which he picked up from the floor.

“It would seem that we have not known each other.  What evasiveness there is in our natures!  Your mother was the soul of candor, yet I am convinced I never knew her.”

“If you bring Alice here, I must go.  We cannot live together.”

“I understand why she would not come here.  She said that she must see you first.  She is in Milford.”

He knocked the ashes from his cigar, looked round the room, and then at me, who wept bitterly.  His face contracted with a spasm.

“We were married two days ago.”  And turning from me quickly, he left the room.

I was never so near groveling on the face of the earth as then; let me but fall, and I was sure that I never should rise.

Ben knew it, but left it to me to tell Veronica.

My grief broke all bounds, and we changed places; she tried to comfort me, forgetting herself.

“Let us go away to the world’s end with Ben.”  But suddenly recollecting that she liked Alice, she cried, “What shall I do?”

What could she do, but offer an unreasoning opposition?  Aunt Merce cried herself sick, fond as she was of Alice, and Temperance declared that if she hadn’t married a widower herself, she would put in an oar.  Anyhow, she hadn’t married a man with grown-up daughters.

“What ails Fanny?” she asked me the next day.  “She looks like a froze pullet.”

“Where is she now?”

“Making the beds.”

Temperance knew well what was the matter, but was too wise to interfere.  I found her, not bed-making, but in a spare room, staring at the wall.  She looked at me with dry eyes, bit her lips, and folded her hands across her chest, after her old, defiant fashion.  I did not speak.

“It is so,” she said; “you need not tear me to pieces with your eyes, I can confess it to you, for you are as I am.  I love him!” And she got up to shake her fist in my face.  “My heart and brain and soul are as good as hers, and he knows it.”

I could not utter a word.

“I know him as you never knew him, and have for years, since I was that starved, poor-house brat your mother took.  Don’t trouble yourself to make a speech about ingratitude.  I know that your mother was good and merciful, and that I should have worshiped her; but I never did.  Do you suppose I ever thought he was perfect, as the rest of you thought?  He is full of faults.  I thought he was dependant on me.  He knows how I feel.  Oh, what shall I do?” She threw up her arms, and dropped on the floor in a hysteric fit.  I locked the door, and picked her up.  “Come out of it, Fanny; I shall stay here till you do.”