“Yes, but no thanks are due you for the information. Mr. Everts, whom I met in Dresden, told me of it. At first I did not believe him, for I had credited you with being a man of honor, but he convinced me of the fact, and in my anger I started home at once, and came here, to find that girl the mistress of the house, and, they tell me, your father’s heir. Is that true?” “I’ve nothing but what I earn,” he said, “but I think I have proved conclusively that I can support you, whatever may come to me, and I expect to do so still, but it must be apart from myself. I wish that distinctly understood, as it will save further discussion. You could not be happy with me; I should be miserable with you after knowing what I do, and seeing what I have seen.” Here she turned fiercely upon him, and with flashing eyes and dilated nostrils demanded what he meant. “I will tell you when I reach it,” he replied; “but first, let me go over the ground from the beginning——” “No need of that,” she replied, angrily. “You went over the ground with _her_,—that girl whom I hate with deadly hatred. I heard you. I was outside the door.” “Listening!” Everard said, contemptuously. “A worthy employment, to which no lady would stoop.” “Who said I was a lady?” she retorted, stung by his manner and the tone of his voice, and forgetting herself entirely in her wrath. “Don’t you suppose I know that it was because I was _not_ a lady according to your creed that your father objected to me and that _you_ have sickened of me. A poor, unknown butcher’s daughter is not a fit match for you; and I was just that. You thought you married the daughter of Roxie Fleming, who kept a boarding-house, and so you did, and something more. You married the daughter of the man who used to deliver meat at your grandfather’s door in Boston, and of the woman who for years cooked in your mother’s family. I knew this when you first came to us, and laughed in my sleeve, for I know how proud you are of family blood and birth, and I can boast of blood, too, but it is the blood of beasts, in which my father dealt, not the blue-veined kind, which shows itself in hypocrisy and the deliberate deception of years. I told your father, when I met him at Commencement, that my mother was present at his wedding, and she was. She made the jellies and ices, and stood with the other servants to see the ceremony. Wouldn’t your lady mother turn over in her coffin if she could know _just_ whom her boy married?” Was she a woman, or a demon? Everard wondered, as he replied: “If possible, I would rather not bring my mother into the conversation, but since you will have it so, I must tell you that she _did_ know who you were.” “How! did you tell your mother of the marriage, and have you kept that from me, too?” Josephine asked, and he replied: