"Oh! colder than the wind that freezes
Founts, that but now in sunshine play'd,
Is that congealing pang which seizes
The trusting bosom when betray'd."--Moore.
Four months had elapsed since the honeymoon at the White Rose Tavern,
and Anna was living at Waltham with her mother who grew more fretful
and complaining every day. The marriage was still the secret of Anna
and Sanderson. The honeymoon at the White Rose had been prolonged to a
week, but no suspicion had entered the minds of Mrs. Moore or Mrs.
Standish Tremont, thanks to Sanderson's skill in sending fictitious
telegrams, aided by so skilled an accomplice as the "Rev." John Langdon.
Week after week, Anna had yielded to Sanderson's entreaties and kept
her marriage a secret from her mother. At first he had sent her
remittances of money with frequent regularity, but, lately, they had
begun to fall off, his letters were less frequent, shorter and more
reserved in tone, and the burden of it all was crushing the youth out
of the girl and breaking her spirit. She had grown to look like some
great sorrowful-eyed Madonna, and her beauty had in it more of the
spiritual quality of an angel than of a woman. As the spring came on,
and the days grew longer she looked like one on whom the hand of death
had been laid.
Her friends noticed this, but not her mother, who was so engrossed with
her own privations, that she had no time or inclination for anything
else.
"Anna, Anna, to think of our coming to this!" she would wail a dozen
times a day--or, "Anna, I can't stand it another minute," and she would
burst into paroxysms of grief, from which nothing could arouse her, and
utterly exhausted by her own emotions, which were chiefly regret and
self-pity, she would sink off to sleep. Anna had no difficulty in
accounting to her mother for the extra comforts with which Lennox
Sanderson's money supplied them. Mrs. Standish Tremont sometimes sent
checks and Mrs. Moore never bothered about the source, so long as the
luxuries were forthcoming.
"Is there no more Kumyss, Anna?" she asked one day.
"No, mother."
"Then why did you neglect to order it?"
The girl's face grew red. "There was no money to pay for it, mother.
I am so sorry."
"And does Frances Tremont neglect us in this way? When we were both
girls, it was quite the other way. My father practically adopted
Frances Tremont. She was married from our house. But you see, Anna,
she made a better marriage than I. Oh, why was your father so
reckless? I warned him not to speculate in the rash way he was
accustomed to doing, but he would never take my advice. If he had, we
would not be as we are now." And again the poor lady was overcome with
her own sorrows.