Ought she to have said it? Had she given him—she, who, at this moment, would have laid down her life to save his, if that had been possible—the comfort she had meant to give, or a most cruel, cruel stab, in his last conscious hour? She looked at him with agonised, imploring face, which mutely prayed him to try and understand her; and there came slowly into his sunken eyes a vague intelligence and a dim, dim smile. He did understand her—better, perhaps, than he had ever understood her before.
"Good little woman!" he murmured, "Good little girl—to tell the truth."
CHAPTER X.
FULFILMENT.
RACHEL, who could not have dissembled if she had tried, appeared to be overwhelmed by Mr. Kingston's sudden death.
She wept herself ill, sitting now in his library chair, now in his office, now in his dressing-room, with mementoes of his domestic occupations and the homely companionship of nearly half-a-dozen wedded years around her; missing him from his accustomed place with a sense of having lost one of the best and kindest husbands that ever ungrateful woman had.