The clergyman groaned aloud, but so absorbed was she in her contemplation of that past, that she did not heed it.
“I laid on the floor all night, just where he had thrown me. Morning came and brought with it more misery. A special delivery letter was brought to me; it contained a draft for $5,000 to be deposited to my credit in the bank, and a short note saying that he did not wish to see me again. That my sin had found me out.
“I was crushed and heartbroken. My illness began with that day. The doctors say it is pulmonary trouble, but it is not that. It is a consumption of the heart and brain, and the desire to live vanished when I knew he had gone out of my life forever.”
The last words were scarcely audible. The clergyman leaned over her and took her in his arms and wiped the death sweat from her brow.
She looked at him and whispered, “Why are you so good to me?”
He thought a moment, fearing to tell her the truth lest the shock prove too much for her rapidly ebbing strength, but the pleading eyes were fixed on his and he could not withhold the truth.
“Because,” he said, gently, “the man who ruined you is my half brother. He was younger than I by ten years, and I loved him better than my life and cared for him after our mother died. I could not believe he would have done such a thing, had not you yourself told me. I have seen your picture in their home, and that is why your face seemed so strangely familiar to me when I first came in. There is but one thing I can do that will in the least atone for what he has done, and it is this: Marry me within an hour, that you may at least have a name. I will take you away with me to a warmer climate and change of scene and you may yet recover and learn to be happy. I think God must have sent me to you at just the right time. Will you marry me?”
He bent over her almost eagerly, longing to hear her say yes, now that he had made up his mind to make the sacrifice.
But she had gone where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.