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thousand times more in his thoughts. But let him see how I keep my vow! Except that that is just what he knew to expect and won’t put him to any shame! Well, even so, let him see how I keep my vow. Every time he breaks his will make me strengthen mine!”
    â€œWell, I hope, dear,” her mother timidly interposed, “I hope you weren’t ever thinking of getting back at him by breaking it.”
    â€œHe knew I was different from all the other women he ever had to do with. Well, I will be an even better wife to him than he was counting on!” she threatened.
    â€œYes, and no doubt that will make him reform,” said her mother.
    â€œNever! Can the leopard change his spots? Nothing will ever make him reform and nobody can help him do it. Nobody. And why should he want to reform? Why should he have any regrets? Who has ever reproached him?”
    She had not. She could say that with pride. And if there was a weakness in the Captain’s character, it was that he allowed himself to be forgiven easily—if that is a weakness. She never reproached him, never even made him feel guilty, so that at last her uncomplaining and unnatural silence inspired him with a certain suspicion of her intelligence. To feign blindness was what her convention demanded, but it got so that no sooner had he become interested in some woman than she would take her up, begin to be seen with her around town, and chummier with her than she had ever been with any woman before. And that woman would be her only friend for just so long as his name stayed linked with hers before moving on—though just how Mrs. Hannah knew his name had moved on was a mystery, considering that she had no one to gossip with (and would have scorned to if she had) but the rather unlikely woman whom he had just left behind. Some of us in town came to feel that she just about selected them for him, had them up to the house and first brought them to his notice. In any case, she was sensitive to the first signs of his weariness of a woman, and when he dropped one she dropped her even harder.
    â€œHah! I’d reproach him all right!” her mother had said. “Any other woman would reproach him. But that is just one more way you’re better than other women. You’re too good for your own good, Hannah, as I have often told you. But,” she then sighed, “maybe he will settle down without anyone’s help in time, as he grows older.”
    â€œHe will never change but to get worse until the day he dies. They never do. How can you be so childish, Mama? Or are you trying to coat the pill for me? Well, don’t try. If there is anything I despise it’s a person who closes her eyes to keep from seeing what’s right in front of them. But even knowing he will never change, even that I can live with, and without complaining. Complain? I would die sooner than give him the satisfaction! I will show a brave face to the world! I’ll show them they don’t have to pity me for a blind fool. For instance. You know of course that he is carrying on right now with Jane Watson. Hah! You didn’t think I knew, did you? Mama, you do not make me feel better, as you suppose, by pretending it isn’t so, or that you don’t know about it if it is. The whole town knows, and I am sure one of your dear friends will have come by now to pity your poor, fond, foolish, deceived daughter to you. Oh, yes, the whole town knows. But I knew before anybody! I saw it coming even before it happened. Didn’t I invite her and that idiot of a husband of hers to dinner a second time after I saw him looking her up and down with that quick little look of his, that special look? Though not so special after all, since it’s the same he uses to appraise a horse or a shooting dog—except he studies a little longer over a horse or a dog. Oh yes, I actually make it easier for him. How many women would do that for a philandering husband? Why,