rudge you the money. Cut her
out--that's the best advice I can give you. Make your husband see you're
the better woman of the two. Cut her out, I'm saying, and don't come
whining here like a cry-baby, who runs to her grandmother's
apron-strings at the first scratch she gets outside."

He had been reaching forward, but he now fell back on his pillows,
saying:

"I see how it is, though. Women without children are always vapouring
about their husbands, as if married life ought to be a garden of Eden.
One woman, one man, and all the rest of the balderdash. I sot your Aunt
Bridget on you before, gel, and I'll have to do it again I'm thinking.
But go away now. If I'm to get better I must have rest. Nessy!"
(calling) "I've a mort o' things to do and most everything is on my
shoulders. Nessy! My medicine! Nessy! Nessy! Where in the world has that
girl gone to?"

"I'm here, Daniel," said Nessy MacLeod coming back to the room; and as I
went out and passed down the corridor, with a crushed and broken spirit
and the tears ready to gush from my eyes, I heard her coaxing him in her
submissive and insincere tones, while he blamed and scolded her.

Half an hour afterwards Aunt Bridget came to me in my mother's room.
Never in my life before had I been pleased to see her. She, at least,
would see my situation with a woman's eyes. But I was doomed to another
disappointment.

"Goodness me, girl," she cried, "what's this your father tells me? One
of your own guests, is it? That one with the big eyes I'll go bail.
Well, serve you right, I say, for bringing a woman like that into the
house with your husband--so smart and such a quality toss with her. If
you were lonely coming home why didn't you ask your aunt or your first
cousin? There would have been no trouble with your husband then--not
about me at all events. But what are you thinking of doing?"

"Getting a divorce," I answered, firmly, for my heart was now aflame.

If I had held a revolver in Aunt Bridget's face she could not have
looked more shocked.

"Mary O'Neill, are you mad?" she cried. "Divorce indeed! No woman of
our family has ever disgraced herself like that. What will your father
say? What's to happen to Betsy Beauty? What are people going to think
about me?"

I answered that I had not made my marriage, and those who had made it
must take the consequences.

"What does that matter now? Hundreds of thousands of women have married
the wrong man of their own free will