He was so heart-sore and wretched in his bereavement, and he wanted the sympathy of some one,—wanted to be petted, as his mother had always petted him in all his griefs, and as she would never pet him again. She was dead, and his heart went out with a great yearning after his young wife, as the proper person to comfort and soothe him now. Had she been there he would have declared her his in the face of all the world, and laying his aching head in her lap would have sobbed out his sorrow. But she was far away, and he was reading her letter, which did not give him much satisfaction from the very first. There was an eagerness to assure him that the marriage was valid, and he was glad, of course, that it was so, and could not blame her for chafing against the secrecy which they must for a time maintain; but what was this request for fifty dollars,—this hint that she had a right to ask support from him? In all his dread of the evils involved in a secret marriage he had never dreamed that she would ask him so soon for fifty dollars, when he had not five in the world, and but for Rosamond’s generous forethought in sending him the ten he would have been obliged to borrow to get home. Fifty dollars! It seemed to the young man like a fabulous sum, which he could never procure. For how was he to do it? He had told his father distinctly that he was free from debt, that he did not owe a dollar, and if he should go to him now with a request for fifty dollars what would he say? It made Everard shiver just to think of confronting his stern father with that demand. The thing was impossible. “I can’t do it,” he said; and then, in his despair, it occurred to him that Josey had no right to make this demand upon him so soon; she might have known he could only meet it by asking his father, which was sure to bring a fearful storm about his head. It was not modest, it was not nice in her, it was not womanly; Bee would never have done it, Rossie would never have done it; but they were different—and there came back to him the remembrance of what his mother had said, and with it a great horror lest Josephine might really lack that innate refinement which marks a true lady. But he would not be disloyal to her even in thought; she was his wife, and she had a right to look to him for support when she could have nothing else. She could not take his name, she could not have his society, and he was a brute to feel annoyed because she asked him for money with which to fit herself for his wife. “She is to be commended for it,” he thought. “I wish her to be accomplished when I present her to Bee, who is such a splendid performer, and jabbers French like a native. Oh, if I had the money,” he continued, feeling as by a revelation that Josephine would never cease her importunings until she had what she wanted. But how should he get it? Could he work at something and earn it, or could he sell his watch, his mother’s gift when he was eighteen?