“No! no! There doesn’t need be more trouble! There isn’t any happiness left; auntie is so cross and suspicious—she suspects you, me, and even herself; for whole days at a time she doesn’t speak, and if I take a book to read she looks at me as reproachfully as though I were doing some wrong thing; if I look sad she says—she says—I am mourning over a thief, and that makes me mad, because I know it isn’t true!” she finished excitedly.
“God bless you, Marjy! That is the first bit of comfort I have received since that miserable night,” he answered.
“How could you imagine that I would think you guilty of such a thing?” reproachfully.
“How happens it that you are out so late at night?” he asked irrelevantly.
“I cannot go out in daytime, people say such awful things about us that it makes me ashamed;” sobbing hysterically. “When I saw you looking so despondent it just broke my heart.”
“Oh, my dear, don’t cry!” helplessly.
She smiled at him through her tears: “Well, I will not, you have enough to bear as it is; but why were you so sad to-night?”
He put his hand under her chin, lifting up her face: “First, and greatest; I thought I had lost that which was dearest to me of aught on earth; I thought that you believed me guilty of taking that money, as you both said repeatedly that I was the only one who knew that accursed combination—and do you know, Marjy, that I can no more get it out of my mind than I can fly. By day and night it haunts me until I am very near insane. I see it before me like sparks of fire; I heard it iterated, and reiterated, and nothing that I can do rids me of the torture; frightful or grotesque pictures are formed, from the midst of which your aunt’s face looks out at me with wide-open, reproachful eyes.”
A shudder swept over him at the remembrance; he drew her into closer embrace, and said, “Little comforter! It is sweet to know that you have faith in me, when friends and clients are deserting me; some one is busily reporting the whole affair, with numerous embellishments;” after a moment’s pause, he continued: “Do you think that auntie would spread the report?”
“Oh, no! No matter what she may say to me, she would not breathe a word of it to others. I must return to the house, or someone will see us talking, and there will be more reports,” added Marjy laughingly. They parted with many fond words, and Marjy went home happier than she had been in many a day. This was but one of many meetings.