“Oh, I won’t worry her,” said Bartley Bradstone, in the dull, apathetic manner which had settled upon him. “Sick people take all sorts of fancies; she’ll see me when she’s better, and—and we’ll get away.”
“Yes, yes,” said the squire, with a heavy sigh. “When all this trouble is over. It is this terrible murder which hangs like a dark cloud over us all.”
“Does—does she speak of it at all?” asked Bartley Bradstone, looking down at the carpet, as if he were suddenly interested in the pattern.
The squire shook his head.
“Not to me; not to Bessie, I think. She has seen no one else, excepting the doctor.”
“That’s right,” said Bartley Bradstone. “Don’t let anybody talk to her about it; she’ll forget it before long.”
It almost seemed as if Olivia had already forgotten it, for day after day passed and she made no mention of the terrible incident which had stricken her down. She lay on the sofa, her thin and now fragile form carefully enwrapped, her hands folded lightly in her lap; her lovely eyes, strained with hidden pain, fixed on the elms which showed through the window. Bessie, who even now scarcely ever left her, would sit silent for hours, sometimes with a book, sometimes at needlework. It was only when the squire entered that Olivia’s pale face warmed with a smile. But one morning, after a long silence, she said, so quietly but suddenly that Bessie started and let the work fall from her hands:
“Bessie, tell me all; tell me the truth.”
“About Mr. Faradeane, miss?” faltered Bessie, who had not yet learned to call her mistress by her wedded title.
“Yes,” said Olivia, turning her eyes upon her with solemn entreaty and insistence. “Don’t be afraid; I am strong enough. Tell me all. What have they done with him?”