"Yes. She had lost that distressed expression. Do you suppose she can feel hurt at my being with her so little these days?"
"No, it isn't that. Sometimes I think she is more troubled after you have been there than at any other time. The nurse even has noticed it. Sometimes I think she has something on her mind still—something she wants to tell."
"Why, she has told me everything. It can't be that."
"I told her about the bill one day, feeling that it would do her good to have something new to think about. She seemed to feel quite a little interested in it. Asks me from time to time how it is getting along, and always if it will give you Philip. She seemed greatly troubled over what Judge Kirtley said."
"A mother's sympathy. I suppose. Poor girl!"
"I guess it must have been that. But it's queer. It was that very day that I heard her moaning to herself—she didn't know I was in the room—and I went to her and said, 'Rosalie, what is it that troubles you?' She looked up at me in such a distressed way and said, 'Oh, I have been a wicked woman! If I could only confess—'"
"Confess!"
"That was what she said. I said, 'Rosalie, child, confess to God. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.' Margaret, I never shall forget the answer she gave me. She said in a sort of despair, 'I have! I have! but He hides His face.'"
"Poor child!" said Margaret. "I will go in to-morrow and see her."
Somehow, Margaret had never found the parting from Philip so hard as it was to-day. "I have such an unaccountable dread of something happening to him," she said. "I have never felt it before."