"Who killed Mr. Samuel Boyd?" she said, in a hissing whisper. "Tell me that."
"I wish to God I could!" he replied.
"I wish to God I could!" she retorted, still speaking in a low, fierce whisper, so that the children in the next room should not hear. "But though we don't know, we have our suspicions. I know what mine are. What are yours? Tell me, if you dare!"
He did not answer her. In the presence of misfortune so undeserved, of suffering so keen, how could he breathe a word against her husband?
"No, you do not dare," she continued. "You haven't the courage to say to my face that you believe my poor husband to be guilty of the crime; but you can say so behind my back, you can go about poisoning people's minds against him, and then come to me smiling in pretended friendship. Oh, Mr. Remington," she said, with a remorseful sob, and her changeful moods showed how her heart was torn, "I would not have believed it of you. You make us trust you, you make us love you, and then you turn against us. See here!" She pulled up the sleeve of her gown, and bared her emaciated arm to his pitying gaze. "As this is, so my whole body is, and my soul is on the rack. You have seen us in our poverty, you know the state to which we have been driven, you have witnessed how we live. Is it the work of an honest man to oppress and malign us?"
"It would be the work of a coward," he answered, "if I had done a hundredth part of what you bring against me. I have done you no wrong, no injustice. I think I know who has instilled these thoughts into your mind, but I will not ask you for his name. Doubtless he has laid the seal of silence on your lips----"
"He has not," she interrupted. "What he has said to me he would say to you if you stood before him."
"I think not," said Dick.
"He would. He has been kind and generous to us; if it had not been for him my children would have starved."
"I would have done as much if I could have afforded it," said Dick, with set teeth. "Has it not crossed your mind, Mrs. Death, that you are being deceived?"