“‘What do you mean, Jim?’ says I.

“’I mean you was right when you thought we’d better not get married, and I was wrong,’ says he; and he spoke terrible bitter and sad.  I never heard him speak like it.  He sounded like another man.  I jest flung down my sewin’ and went over to him, and leaned his poor head against my shoulder.  ‘Jim,’ says I, ’I ‘ain’t never regretted it.’  And God knows I spoke the truth, and I speak the truth when I say it now.  I ’ain’t never regretted it, and I don’t regret it now.”  Eva said the last with a look as if she were hurling defiance, then she went on in the same high, monotonous key above the ordinary key of life.  “When I says that, he jest gives a great sigh and sort of pushes me away and gets up.  ‘Well, I have,’ says he; ’I have, and sometimes I think the best thing I can do is to take myself out of the way, instead of sittin’ here day after day and seein’ you wearin’ your fingers to the bone to support me, and seein’ my child, an’ bein’ ashamed to look her in the face.  Sometimes I think you an’ Amabel would be a damned sight better off without me than with me, and I’m done for anyway, and it don’t make much difference what I do next.’

“‘Jim Tenny, you jest quit talkin’ in such a way as this,’ says I, for I thought he meant to make away with himself, but that wa’n’t what he meant.  Aggie Bemis had been windin’ her net round him, and he wa’n’t nothin’ but a man, and all discouraged, and he gave in.  Any man would in his place.  He ain’t to blame.  It’s the tyrants that’s over us all that’s to blame.”  Eva’s voice shrilled higher.  “Curse them!” she shrieked.  “Curse them all!—­every rich man in this gold-ridden country!”

“Eva Tenny, you’re beside yourself,” said Fanny, who was herself white to her lips, yet she viewed her sister indignantly, as one violent nature will view another when it is overborne and carried away by a kindred passion.

“Wonder if you’d be real calm in my place?” said Eva; and as she spoke the dreadful impassibility of desperation returned upon her.  It was as if she suffered some chemical change before their eyes.  She became silent and seemed as if she would never speak again.

“You hadn’t ought to talk so,” said Fanny, weakly, she was so terrified.  “You ought to think of poor little Amabel,” she added.

With that, Eva’s dreadful, expressionless eyes turned towards Amabel, and she held out her hand to her, but the child fairly screamed with terror and clung to Ellen.  “Oh, Aunt Eva, don’t look at her so, you frighten her,” Ellen said, trembling, and leaning her cheek against Amabel’s little, cold, pale one.  “Don’t cry, darling,” she whispered.  “It is just because poor mother feels so badly.”

“I am afraid of my mamma, and I want papa!” screamed Amabel, quivering, and stiffening her slender back.

Eva continued to keep her eyes fixed upon her, and to hold out that commanding hand.

Fanny went close to her, seized her by both shoulders, and shook her violently.  “Eva Tenny, you behave yourself!” said she.  “There ain’t no need of your acting this way if your man has run away with another woman, and as for that child goin’ with you, she sha’n’t go one step with any woman that looks and acts as you do.  Actin’ this way over a good-for-nothin’ fellow like Jim Tenny!”