Kate turned again, and looked narrowly at the speaker. Then she
laughed heartily. "Well done, Jennie!" she cried. "Why, you are
such a fashionable lady, such a Dolly Varden, I never saw who you
were. How do you do? Won't you sit down and have a chat? It's
just dawning on me that very possibly, from your dress and manner,
I SHOULD have called you Mrs. Jardine."
"Didn't he tell you?" cried Jennie.
"He did not," said Kate. "Your name was not mentioned. He said
no word about being married."
"We have been married since a few weeks after Mrs. Jardine died.
I taught him the things you turned him down for not knowing; I
have studied him, and waited on him, and borne his children, and
THIS is my reward. What are you going to do?"
"Go back to the hotel, when I finish with this view," said Kate.
"I find it almost as attractive by day as it was by night."
"Brazen!" cried Mrs. Jardine.
"Choose your words carefully," said Kate. "I was here first; since
you have delivered your message, suppose you go and leave me to my
view."
"Not till I get ready," said Mrs. Jardine. "Perhaps it will help
you to know that I was not twenty feet from you at any time last
night; and that I stood where I could have touched you, while my
husband made love to you for hours."
"So?" said Kate. "I'm not at all surprised. That's exactly what
I should have expected of you. But doesn't it clarify the
situation any, at least for me, when I tell you that Mr. Jardine
gave me no faintest hint that he was married? If you heard all we
said, you surely remember that you were not mentioned?"
Mrs. Jardine sat down suddenly and gripped her little hands. Kate
studied her intently. She wondered what she would look like when
her hair was being washed; at this thought she smiled broadly.
That made the other woman frantic.
"You can well LAUGH at me," she said. "I made the banner fool of
the ages of myself when I schemed to marry him. I knew he loved
you. He told me so. He told me, just as he told you last night,
that he never had loved any other woman and he never would. I
thought he didn't know himself as I knew him. He was so grand to
his mother, I thought if I taught him, and helped him back to
self-respect, and gave him children, he must, and would love me.
Well, I was mistaken. He does not, and never will. Every day he
thinks of you; not a night but he speaks your name. He thinks all
things can be done with money -- "