Aprils Lady | Page 5

know, is a good name."
"If he had accepted that title he would have been as--the same--as your father!" There is defiance in this sentence.
"Quite the same!"
"No, no, he would not," her defiance now changes into, sorrowful honesty. "Your father has been a baronet for centuries, my father would have only been a baronet for a few years."
"For centuries!" repeats Mr. Monkton with an alarmed air. There is a latent sense of humor (or rather an appreciation of humor) about him that hardly endears him to the opposite sex. His wife, being Irish, condones it, because she happens to understand it, but there are moments, we all know, when even the very best and most appreciative women refuse to understand anything. This is one of them. "Condemn my father if you will," says Mr. Monkton, "accuse him of all the crimes in the calendar, but for my sake give up the belief that he is the real and original Wandering Jew. Debrett--Burke--either of those immaculate people will prove to you that my father ascended his throne in----"
"You can laugh at me if you like, Freddy," says Mrs. Monkton with severity tempered with dignity; "but if you laughed until this day month you couldn't make me forget the things that make me unhappy."
"I don't want to," says Mr. Monkton, still disgracefully frivolous. "I'm one of the things, and yet----"
"Don't!" says his wife, so abruptly, and with such an evident determination to give way to mirth, coupled with an equally strong determination to give way to tears, that he at once lays down his arms.
"Go on then," says he, seating himself beside her. She is not in the arm-chair now, but on an ancient and respectable sofa that gives ample room for the accommodation of two; a luxury denied by that old curmudgeon the arm-chair.
"Well, it is this, Freddy. When I think of that dreadful old woman, Mrs. Burke, I feel as though you thought she was a fair sample of the rest of my family. But she is not a sample, she has nothing to do with us. An uncle of my mother married her because she was rich, and there her relationship to us began and ended."
"Still----"
"Yes, I know, you needn't remind me, it seems burnt into my brain, I know she took us in after my father's death, and covered me and Joyce with benefits when we hadn't a penny in the world we could call our own. I quite understand, indeed, that we should have starved but for her, and yet--yet--" passionately, "I cannot forgive her for perpetually reminding us that we had not that penny!"
"It must have been a bad time," says Monkton slowly. He takes her hand and smoothes it lovingly between both of his.
"She was vulgar. That was not her fault; I forgive her that. What I can't forgive her, is the fact that you should have met me in her house."
"A little unfair, isn't it?"
"Is it? You will always now associate me with her!"
"I shan't indeed. Do you think I have up to this? Nonsense! A more absurd amalgamation I couldn't fancy."
"She was not one of us," feverishly. "I have never spoken to you about this, Freddy, since that first letter your father wrote to you just after our marriage. You remember it? And then, I couldn't explain somehow--but now--this last letter has upset me dreadfully; I feel as if it was all different, and that it was my duty to make you aware of the real truth. Sir George thinks of me as one beneath him; that is not true. He may have heard that I lived with Mrs. Burke, and that she was my aunt; but if my mother's brother chose to marry a woman of no family because she had money,"--contemptuously, "that might disgrace him, but would not make her kin to us. You saw her, you--" lifting distressed eyes to his--"you thought her dreadful, didn't you?"
"I have only had one thought about her. That she was good to you in your trouble, and that but for her I should never have met you."
"That is like you," says she gratefully, yet impatiently. "But it isn't enough. I want you to understand that she is quite unlike my own real people--my father, who was like a prince," throwing up her head, "and my uncle, his brother."
"You have an uncle, then?" with some surprise.
"Oh no, had," sadly.
"He is dead then?"
"Yes. I suppose so. You are wondering," says she quickly, "that I have never spoken to you of him or my father before. But I could not. The thought that your family objected to me, despised me, seemed to compel me to silence. And you--you asked me very little."
"How could I, Barbara? Any attempt I made was repulsed. I thought it kinder to----"
"Yes--I was wrong.