“Was it for us to retard your convalescence, and set you fretting, and perhaps destroy your child? Rosa, my darling, think what a treasure Heaven has sent you, to love and care for.”
“Yes,” said she, trembling, “Heaven has been good to me; I hope Heaven will always be as good to me. I don't deserve it; but then I tell God so. I am very grateful, and very penitent. I never forget that, if I had been a good wife, my husband—five weeks is a long time. Why do you tremble so? Why are you so pale—a strong man like you? CALAMITY! CALAMITY!”
Dr. Philip hung his head.
She looked at him, started wildly up, then sank back into her chair. So the stricken deer leaps, then falls. Yet even now she put on a deceitful calm, and said, “Tell me the truth. I have a right to know.”
He stammered out, “There is a report of an accident at sea.”
She kept silence.
“Of a passenger drowned—out of that ship. This, coupled with his silence, fills our hearts with fear.”
“It is worse—you are breaking it to me—you have gone too far to stop. One word: is he alive? Oh, say he is alive!”
Philip rang the bell hard, and said in a troubled voice, “Rosa, think of your child.”
“Not when my husband—Is he alive or dead?”