"I did not know your mother had been so ill," she said, with some contrition in her voice.
"It was not my mother. I am sorry, but I cannot tell you now who it was. You will know all about it some time. And more than that," he continued, "on the fourth day after you had gone, one who had saved my life in battle came and asked me to acknowledge my debt by performing an important service for him, which has required nearly all my time since that."
"Oh, Mr. Le Moyne!" she said, as the tears came into her eyes, "please forgive my anger and injustice."
"I have nothing to forgive," he said. "You were not unjust—only ignorant of the facts, and your anger was but natural."
"Yet I should have known better. I should have trusted you more," said she, sobbing.
"Well, do not mind it," he said, soothingly. "But if my explanation is thus far sufficient, will you allow me to sit down while I tell you the rest? The story is a somewhat long one."
"Oh, pray do, Mr. Le Moyne. Excuse my rudeness as well as my anger.
Please be seated and let me take your hat."
She took the hat and laid it on a table at the side of the room, and then returned and listened to his story. He told her all that he had told his mother the night before, explaining such things as he thought she might not fully understand. Then he showed her the pocket-book and the will, which he had brought with him for that purpose.
At first she listened to what he said with a constrained and embarrassed air. He had not proceeded far, however, before she began to manifest a lively interest in his words. She leaned forward and gazed into his face with an absorbed earnestness that awakened his surprise. Two or three times she reached out her hand, and her lips moved, as though she would interrupt him. He stopped; but, without speaking, she nodded for him to go on. When he handed her the pocket-book and the will, she took them with a trembling hand and examined them with the utmost care. The student-lamp had been lighted before his story was ended. Her face was in the soft light which came through the porcelain shade, but her hands were in the circle of bright light that escaped beneath it. He noticed that they trembled so that they could scarcely hold the paper she was trying to read. He asked if he should not read it for her. She handed him the will, but kept the pocketbook tightly clasped in both hands, with the rude scrawl,