The woman was a crook, and there was an
end of it. Her ruse of spoliation within the law was evidence of
her shrewdness, nothing more.
Mary Turner herself, too, was in a condition utterly wretched,
and for the same cause--Dick Gilder. That source of the father's
suffering was hers as well. She had won her ambition of years,
revenge on the man who had sent her to prison. And now the joy
of it was a torture, for the puppet of her plans, the son, had
suddenly become the chief thing in her life. She had taken it
for granted that he would leave her after he came to know that
her marriage to him was only a device to bring shame on his
father. Instead, he loved her. That fact seemed the secret of
her distress. He loved her. More, he dared believe, and to
assert boldly, that she loved him. Had he acted otherwise, the
matter would have been simple enough.... But he loved her, loved
her still, though he knew the shame that had clouded her life,
knew the motive that had led her to accept him as a husband.
More--by a sublime audacity, he declared that she loved him.
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