" Her
face lit up with a reminiscent smile, and then clouded again. "I hate him
now," she exclaimed, with a change of tone that startled Woburn. "I'd like
to kill him--but he's killed me instead.
"Well, he bewitched me so I didn't know what I was doing; I was like
somebody in a trance. When he wasn't there I didn't want to speak to
anybody; I used to lie in bed half the day just to get away from folks; I
hated Joe and Hinksville and everything else. When he came back the days
went like a flash; we were together nearly all the time. I knew Joe's
mother was spying on us, but I didn't care. And at last it seemed as if I
couldn't let him go away again without me; so one evening he stopped at
the back gate in a buggy, and we drove off together and caught the eastern
express at River Bend. He promised to bring me to New York." She paused,
and then added scornfully, "He didn't even do that!"
Woburn had returned to his seat and was watching her attentively. It was
curious to note how her passion was spending itself in words; he saw that
she would never kill herself while she had any one to talk to.
"That was five months ago," she continued, "and we travelled all through
the southern states, and stayed a little while near Philadelphia, where
his business is. He did things real stylishly at first. Then he was sent
to Albany, and we stayed a week at the Delavan House. One afternoon I went
out to do some shopping, and when I came back he was gone.
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