It all depends
on you now, Mrs. Crozier."
"No, not all."
"He used to be afraid of you; now you are afraid of him," said Kitty, as
though stating a commonplace.
There was no more shrewishness left in the little woman to meet this
chastisement. The forces against her were too many. Loneliness and the
long struggle to face the world without her man; the determination of
this masterful young woman who had been so long a part of her husband's
life; and, more than all, a new feeling altogether--love, and the
dependence a woman feels, the longing to find rest in strong arms, which
comes with the first revelation of love, had conquered what Kitty had
called her "bossiness." She was now tremulous before the crisis which
she must presently face. Pride in her fortune, in her independence, had
died down in her. She no longer thought of herself as a woman especially
endowed and privileged. She took her fortune now like a man; for she had
been taught that a man could set her aside just because she had money,
could desert her to be independent of it. It had been a revelation to
her, and she was chastened of all the termagancy visible and invisible in
her. She stood now before Kitty of "a humble and a contrite heart," and
made no reply at all to the implied challenge.
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