They had now reached the Battery Park; they entered and sat down on one of the benches; the negro girl played with Jack on the broad walk which overlooks the water. The harbor, with Sumter in the distance, the two rivers flowing down, one on each side of the beautiful city—beautiful still, though desolated by war—made a scene full of loveliness. The judge took off his hat, as if he needed more air.
“You are ill,” said Eve, in the same mechanical voice.
“It’s only that I cannot believe it even now—what Cicely told me. Why, it is my own darling little grandchild, who has been treated so, who has been beaten—struck to the floor! His strong hand has come down on her shoulder so that you could hear it!—Cicely, Eve; my little Cicely!” His old eyes, small and dry, looked at Eve piteously.
She put out her hand and took his in silence.
“She has always been such a delicate little creature, that we never let her have any care or trouble; we even spoke to her gently always, Sabrina and I. For she was so delicate when she was a baby that they thought she couldn’t live; she had her bright eyes, even then, and she was so pretty and winning; but they said she must soon follow her mother. We were so glad when she began to grow stronger. But—have we saved her for this?”
“She is away from him now,” Eve answered.
“And there was her father—my boy Marmaduke; what would Duke have said?—his baby—his little girl!” He rose and walked to and fro; for the first time his gait was that of a feeble old man.
“They can’t know what happens to us here!—or else that they see some way out of it that we do not see,” said Eve, passionately. “Otherwise, it would be too cruel.”
“Duke died when she was only two years old,” the judge went on. “‘Father, ’ he said to me, just at the last, ‘I leave you baby.’ And this is what I have brought her to!”
“You had nothing to do with it, she married him of her own free will. And she forgot everything, she forgot my brother very soon.”