“I should have said so yesterday without any hesitation; to-day—”
“To-day?” she echoed eagerly, as he paused.
“To-day,” he answered, letting his glance sweep over the pathetic memorials so thick about them—“to-day at least I understand, and I do not wonder.”
She looked at him with all her heart in her eyes, trying to read his most hidden feeling. Then she touched his arm lightly with the tips of her slender black-gloved fingers.
“Come,” she said.
She led him across the room, and pointed to a colonel’s sash and pistols which lay in one of the cases under a faded card.
“Those were my husband’s.”
“Those!” he cried. “You Louise’s mother? It is impossible!”
“It may be impossible; but, as I said of the other thing, it is true.”
“The other thing?” he repeated. “What—do you mean the thing you said—that my father and he— That cannot be true. I should surely have known!”