have I been married to you, under what I may call false pretences. People called you the Golden Jericho, or is it likely that I could have forgotten the heroic man who—I feel it—has a slight put upon him in his warrior’s grave, by your being in the nightcap you wear at this moment? However, he forgives me. At least, I trust”—and Mrs. Jericho spoke with a spasm—“I[Pg 16] trust he does. It was all for the sake of his precious orphans that I am in the bed I am. Yes, Pennibacker”—and his widow cast up her eyes, as though addressing her first husband, looking down benignly upon her from the tester—“Yes, dear Pennibacker, you know for what I sacrificed the best of wives, and the most disconsolate of widows. I could have wished, like the Hindoo, to be burnt upon the pyre; I was equal to it; I could have rejoiced in it. But I re-married, unwillingly re-married, to sacrifice myself for our children. Yes, Pennibacker”— [Pg 16] “Damn Pennibacker!” cried Jericho. “Mr. Jericho,” said Pennibacker’s widow, with her deepest voice, and with thunder brooding at her brows—“Mr. Jericho, will you dare to desecrate the ashes of the dead? Demon! Will you?” “Well, then,” said Jericho, a little appalled, for an impartial circle had called Mrs. Jericho the Siddons of private life, she could so freeze her friends with her fine manner—“Well, then, let me go to sleep. It’s very hard, Mrs. Jericho; very hard, that you will always be throwing your husband’s ashes in my face.” “No levity, sir; no levity,” said Mrs. Jericho, very ponderously. “Though unhappily I am your wife, I cannot forget that I am Miss Pennibacker’s widow.” And then Mrs. Jericho drew a sepulchral sigh; and then she hopefully added—“but he forgives me. However, as I believe I have observed once before, Mr. Jericho, I will no longer be made a cat’s-paw of.” “Of course not. Why should you?” said Jericho. “I’m sure, for my part, I want a wife with as little of the cat as possible.” And then Jericho shrank in the bed, as though he had ventured too much. Possibly Mrs. Jericho was too imperious to note the coarse affront; for she merely repeated—“Very well, Mr. Jericho: all I want to know is this—I ask to know no more. When—when will you let me have some money?” As though the bed had been strown with powdered pumice, Jericho shifted and writhed. [Pg 17] [Pg 17]
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