er happiness had been marred in the early part
of the evening by Ross's attendance on Helen Galloway in whose honor the
ball was given; how he made her happy again by staying beside her the
whole latter part of the evening, he and more young men than any other
girl had. And here was the slipper, with its handsome buckle torn off,
stained, out of shape from having been so long cast aside. Where did it
come from? How did it get here? Why had this ghost suddenly appeared to
her? On the opposite seat, beside her traveling case, fashionable,
obviously expensive, with her initials in gold, was a bag marked
"T.H."--of an unfashionable appearance, obviously inexpensive, painfully
new. She could not take her fascinated eyes from it; and the hammering of
her blood upon her brain, as the carriage flew toward the station, seemed
to be a voice monotonously repeating, "Married--married--" She shuddered.
"My fate is settled for life," she said to herself. "I am _married_!"

She dared not look at her husband--Husband! In that moment of cruel
memory, of ghastly chopfallen vanity, it was all she could do not visibly
to shrink from him. She forgot that he was her best friend, her friend
from babyhood almost, Theodore Hargrave. She felt only that he was her
husband, her jailer, the representative of all that divided her forever
from the life of luxury and show which had so permeated her young blood
with its sweet, lingering poison. She descended from the carriage, passed
the crowd of gaping, grinning loungers, and entered the train, with
cheeks burning and eyes downcast, an ideal bride in appearance of shy and
refined modesty. And none who saw her delicate, aristocratic beauty of
face and figure and dress could have attributed to her the angry, ugly,
snobbish thoughts, like a black core hidden deep in the heart of a
bewitching flower.

As he sat opposite her in the compartment, she was exaggerating into
glaring faults the many little signs of indifference to fashion in his
dress. She had never especially noted before, but now she was noting as
a shuddering exhibition of "commonness," that he wore detachable
cuffs--and upon this detail her distraught mind fixed as typical. She
could not take her eyes off his wrists; every time he moved his arms so
that she could see the wristband within his cuff, she felt as if a piece
of sandpaper were scraping her skin. He laid his hand on her two gloved
hands, folded loosely in her lap. Every muscle, eve