She finished dusting, and returned to the kitchen. "I wonder what gran'ma Eliot 'u'd say if she knew you'd turned Orville's mother out, Emarine?"
There was no reply. Emarine was at the table making tarts. Her back was to mother.
"I didn't mean what I said about bein' sorry I egged you on, Emarine. I'm glad you turned her out. She'd _ort_ to be turned out."
Emarine dropped a quivering ruby of jelly into a golden ring of pastry and laid it carefully on a plate.
"Gran'ma Eliot can go talkin' about her daughter-'n-law Sidonie all she wants, Emarine. You keep a stiff upper lip."
"I can 'tend to my own affairs," said Emarine, fiercely.
"Well, don't flare up so. Here comes Orviile. Land, but he does look peakid!"
After supper, when her mother had gone home for the night, Emarine put on her hat and shawl.
Her husband was sitting by the fireplace, looking thoughtfully at the bed of coals.
"I'm goin' out," she said briefly. "You keep the fire up."
"Why, Emarine, it's dark. Don't choo want I sh'u'd go along?"
He looked at her anxiously, but he knew from the way she set her heels down that remonstrance would be useless.
"Don't stay long," he said, in a tone of habitual tenderness. He loved her passionately, in spite of the lasting hurt she had given him when she parted him from his mother. It was a hurt that had sunk deeper than even he realized. It lay heavy on his heart day and night. It took the blue out of the sky, and the green out of the grass, and the gold out of the sunlight; it took the exaltation and the rapture out of his tenderest moments of love.
He never reproached her, he never really blamed her; certainly he never pitied himself. But he carried a heavy heart around with him, and his few smiles were joyless things.
For the trouble he blamed only himself. He had promised Emarine solemnly before he married her, that if there were any "knuckling down" to be done, his mother should be the one to do it. He had made the promise deliberately, and he could no more have broken it than he could have changed the color of his eyes. When bitter feeling arises between two relatives by marriage, it is the one who stands between them--the one who is bound by the tenderest ties to both--who has the real suffering to bear, who is torn and tortured until life holds nothing worth the having.