Cousin Maude - Page 121/138

He might have made some conjugal remark, but the expression of her

face forbade anything like reproof, and he soon found use for his

powers of speech in the invectives he heaped upon the long rocker of

the chair over which he stumbled as he groped his way back to the

bedroom, where his wife rather enjoyed, than otherwise, the

lamentations which he made over his "bruised shin." The story she

had been telling had awakened many bitter memories in Maude

Glendower's bosom, and for hours she turned uneasily from side to

side, trying in vain to sleep. Maude Remington, too, was wakeful,

thinking over the strange tale she had heard, and marveling that her

life should be so closely interwoven with that of the woman whom she

called her mother.

"I love her all the more," she said; "I shall pity her so, staying

here alone, when I am gone."

Then her thoughts turned upon the future, when she would be the wife

of James De Vere, and while wondering if she should really ever see

again, she fell asleep just as the morning was dimly breaking in the

east.