"Sit down," said Flossy calmly, "and listen to me. I have an odd story to tell you. The man of whom we speak managed to do what scarcely another convict has done in recent times—he escaped. He nearly killed the warder in his flight, but not quite—so that counts for nothing. It is rumored that he reached America, where he is living contentedly in the backwoods. I can show you the newspaper account of his escape. I thought," she added a little cynically, "that it might relieve your mind to hear of it; but it does not seem to do so. I fancied that you would be glad. Would you rather that he were dead?"
"No, no; Heaven knows that I rejoice in his escape!" cried her brother, sitting down again with his forehead bowed upon his clasped hands and his elbows on his knees. "I have blood-guiltiness enough already upon my soul. Glad? I am so glad, Florence, that I can almost dare to thank God that Westwood is alive and has escaped. I—I shall never escape!"
CHAPTER XXI.
Enid had the look of a veritable snow-queen thought Hubert, as he came upon her a day or two later in a little salon opening out of the drawing-room, and found her gazing out upon a landscape of which all the lines were blurred in falling snow. She was dressed in a white woollen gown, which was confined at her waist by a simple white ribbon, and had white fur at the throat and wrists.
The dead-white suited her delicate complexion and golden hair; she had the soft and stainless look of a newly fallen snowflake, which to touch were to destroy. Hubert almost felt as if he ought not to speak to one so far removed from him—one set so high above him by her innocence and purity. And yet he was bound to speak.
"You like the snow?" he began.
"Yes—as much as I like anything."
"At your age," said Hubert slowly, "you should like everything."