"Then why did you marry her?" she asked at last. She watched eagerly to
hear his answer.
"It was all done for a lark," began the young man. "We were out with
some friends, Miss Brady and I, and I--I suppose we had all been
drinking too much; then some one suggested a wedding, and I was fool
enough to play the bridegroom."
"And you did not love her?"
Faith asked the question slowly.
"Not a bit, Miss Marvin; I liked her, of course. But she was in love
with me; I discovered that later."
"Why did you not own her as your wife?"
Faith hardly knew her own voice as she asked this. It hardly seemed
possible that she could speak so calmly.
Mr. Denton looked at her sharply before he replied.
"You can guess that surely," he said very softly. "Rascal that I was, I
was ashamed to own her."
After a minute he went on with almost desperate calmness, as though he
was determined to tell the whole of the distressing secret.
"I told her that dad would disown me if he knew that I had married her,
but that if she would wait until I was twenty-one, that there would be
no more danger of my losing my money. Mag likes money, you know, and she
consented readily, but when she saw me flirting with the other girls,
as I had to, you see, to make every one think that I was still single,
her jealousy got the best of her, and you know what happened.
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