"And you staid by him to the last?"
She turned upon him a sharp and penetrating look. He felt the whole force of her glance, and assumed an expression well calculated to deceive a much less excitable observer.
"I thought," he said, "that you had been living in retirement. That you left the noble villain without public disgrace. It was a great satisfaction for me to know this."
"I did leave him. I did live in retirement, toiled for my own bread; by wrestling with poverty I strove to win back some portion of content."
"Yet you were with him when he died!"
"It was a mournful death-bed—he sent for me, and I went. Oh! it was a mournful death-bed!"
Tears rolled down her cheeks; she covered her face with both hands.
"I had been the governess of his daughter—her nurse in the last sickness."
"And you lived apart, alone—you and this daughter."
"She died in Florence. We were alone. She was sent home for burial."