life that had never come into her
thoughts before. For a moment she longed with all the intensity of a child
for her father's house and the shelter of his loving protection, amply
supported by her stepmother's capable, self-sufficient, comforting
countenance. Her heart sank with the fear that she would never be able to
do justice to the position of David's wife, and David would be
disappointed in her and sorry he had accepted her sacrifice. She roused
herself to do better, and bit her tongue to remind it that it must make no
more blunders. She praised the garden, the house and the furnishings, in
voluble, eager, girlish language until the thin lines of lips relaxed and
the drawn muscles of the aunts' cheeks took on a less severe aspect. They
liked to be appreciated, and they certainly had taken a great deal of
pains with the house--for David's sake--not for hers. They did not care to
have her deluded by the idea that they had done it for her sake. David was
to them a young god, and with this one supreme idea of his supremacy they
wished to impress his young wife. It was a foregone conclusion in their
minds that no mere pretty young girl was capable of appreciating David, as
could they, who had watched him from babyhood, and pampered and petted and
been severe with him by turns, until if he had not had the temper of an
angel he would surely have been spoiled.

"We did our best to make the house just as David would have wished to have
it," said Aunt Amelia at last, a self-satisfied shadow of what answered
for a smile with her, passing over her face for a moment.

"We did not at all approve of this big house, nor indeed of David's
setting up in a separate establishment for himself," said Aunt Hortense,
taking up her knitting again. "We thought it utterly unnecessary and
uneconomical, when he might have brought his wife home to us, but he
seemed to think you would want a house to yourself, so we did the best we
could."

There was a martyr-like air in Aunt Hortense's words that made Marcia feel
herself again a criminal, albeit she knew she was suffering vicariously.
But in her heart she felt a sudden thankfulness that she was spared the
trial of living daily under the scrutiny of these two, and she blest David
for his thoughtfulness, even though it had not been meant for her. She
went into pleased ecstasies once more over the house, and its furnishings,
and ended by her pleasure over the piano.

There was grim stillness