"Hush, hush, darling! This is taking upon yourself pain without cause. I come to say this, knowing it would give you a little comfort. I questioned the doctor. They sent for him again, for I was suffering from the shock, and nearly broken down. Ill as I was, this death preyed upon me worse than the fever, so I questioned the doctor closely. I demanded that he should make sure of the causes that led to your father's death. He did make sure. While you were shut up in your room, mourning and inconsolable, there was a medical examination. Your father might have lived a few hours longer but for the sudden shock of my presence here; but he must have died from his wound. No power on earth could have saved him. That was the general opinion."
Ruth hushed her sobs, and lifted her face, on which the tears still trembled; for the first time since her father's death a gleam of hope shone in her eyes.
"Is this so, Walton?"
"Indeed it is. I would have broken loose from them all, and told you this before, but my presence seemed to drive you wild."
"It did—it did."
"That terrible night you sent me from the house, with such pitiful entreaties to be left alone. You preferred to be with the dead rather than me."
"That was when I thought we had killed him. That was when I felt like a murderess. But it is over now. I can breathe again. He is gone—my poor father is gone, but I did not kill him—I did not kill him! Oh, Walton, there is no sin in my kisses now; nothing but tears."
The poor young creature trembled under this shock of new emotions. The great horror was gone. She no longer clung to her husband with the feeling of a criminal.
"You have suffered, my poor child. We have both suffered, because I was selfishly rash; more than that, a coward."
"No, no. Rash, but not a coward," broke in Ruth, impetuously. "You shrunk from giving pain, that is all."