CHAPTER I.

WHEN POVERTY ENTERS THE DOOR.

To love and hate in the same breath, it is as cruel as a tragedy.

Leon and Verna Dalrymple knew all that subtle pain as they faced each other in the cold, gray light of that autumn day whereon they were parting forever.

It was not simply a lovers’ quarrel, either.

The pity of it was that they were husband and wife, both very young, both very fond, but driven apart by unreasoning pride and passion.

The husband was twenty-one years old, the bride but seventeen—a case of “marry in haste, repent at leisure.”

Six months ago the bride, sole daughter of a wealthy family, had eloped from boarding school with a poor young man, a teacher of music.

For her fault the daughter had been cast off by her parents, and the young man dismissed from the school where he taught. Unable to secure another position, misfortune had steadily tracked his footsteps until he could scarcely afford bread for himself and the fair, dainty bride.

Having rushed into marriage without thought for the future, misfortune soured their naturally hasty tempers, and when the fierce wolf of poverty came in at the door love flew out of the window.

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They could scarcely have told how it all began, but at last they were quarreling most bitterly. There were mutual recriminations and fault-findings, that increased in virulence until one day, goaded by Verna’s reproaches, Leon cried out in hot resentment:

“I regret that I ever saw you!”

“I hate you!” she replied, with a scornful flash of her great, somber, dark eyes, and whether the words were true or not, she never took them back—neither one ever professed sorrow for angry words or begged forgiveness. The husband, hurt by her sneers, pained by her reproaches, and inwardly wounded by his inability to provide for her better, took refuge in sullen silence that she resented by downright sulking. She was furious at his unkindness, disgusted with her poverty, and unconsciously ill of a trouble she did not suspect, so the breach widened between their hearts until one day she said with rigid white lips and somber, angry eyes:

“I am tired of starving and freezing here where I am not wanted! I shall go home and beg papa to forgive my folly and get me a divorce from you.”

The awful words were spoken and they fell on his heart like hailstones, but though he grew pale as death and his whole frame trembled, he feigned the cruelest indifference, saying bitterly:

“You could not please me better!”

So the die was cast.

Perhaps she had wished to test his love, perhaps she hoped that the fear of losing her might beat down the armor of his stubborn pride and make him sue for a reconciliation.

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Whatever she might have secretly desired, his answer was a deathblow to her hopes.

At his words a strange look flashed into her large, dark eyes, and for a moment her red mouth quivered like a child’s at an unexpected blow. But she swallowed a choking sob, and the next moment her young face grew rigid as a mask.

Rising slowly from her seat, she put on her hat, caught up a small hand satchel from the floor, and passed silently from the poor apartment.

If only she had turned her fair, haughty head for one backward glance—if only——

For his passionate heart had almost leaped from his breast in the terror of his loss.

Anger, pride, and pique were forgotten alike in the supreme anguish of that moment’s despair.

As she turned away he stretched his arms out yearningly, whispering with stiff, white lips that could scarcely frame the words:

“Darling, come back!”

Had she only looked back, her heart would have melted with tenderness at sight of his grief. She would have fallen, sobbing, on his breast.

But she never turned her proud, dark head; she did not catch the yearning whisper, and his arms dropped heavily to his sides again, while the echo of her retreating footsteps fell like a death knell on his heart.

Angry and estranged, they had parted to go their separate ways forever, and the stream of destiny rolled in widely between their sundered lives, thus wrenched violently heart from heart.

To be born to the heritage of such beauty, pride,
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and passion, is not altogether goodly—yet, it is the daughter of this strangely parted pair whom I have chosen for my heroine, for in four months after Verna Dalrymple left her husband she became the mother of a lovely daughter—a girl that in its dainty beauty possessed the blond fairness of the father, the dark, dreamy eyes and proud, beautiful mouth of the brunet mother.

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