"
She looked up at him in alarmed inquiry, and he went on, "'Madame Rumor,
with her thousand tongues,' would have had many a tale to tell of the
cruel abuse to which you had been subjected by your husband and his
family--so cruel that you were compelled to run away in the night, taking
advantage of the temporary absence of your tyrannical husband; while----"
"O Ned, dear Ned, I never thought of that!" she exclaimed, interrupting
him with a burst of tears and sobs. "I wouldn't for the world have
wrought harm to you or any of them."
"No, love, I know you wouldn't. I believe your motives were altogether
kind and self-sacrificing," he said soothingly; "and you yourself would
have been the greatest sufferer; the world judges hardly--how hardly my
little girl-wife has no idea; wicked people would have found wicked
motives to which to impute your act and caused a stain upon your fair fame
that might never have been removed.
"But there, there, love, do not cry any more over it; happily, the whole
thing is a secret between us two, and we may now dismiss the disagreeable
subject forever.
"But shall we not promise each other that we will never part in anger,
even when the separation may not be for an hour? or ever lie down to sleep
at night unreconciled, if there has been the slightest misunderstanding or
coldness between us?"
"Oh, yes, yes, I promise!" she cried eagerly; "but, oh, dear Ned, I hope
we will never, never have any more coldness or quarrelling between us,
never say a cross word to each other.
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