I put my hand to my heart.
“What was it you wanted to say to me?” I asked. I felt that I could not bear too much.
“Why did you marry Maurice Stair?”
The unexpected question bewildered me. But she was too ill to be told that my reason was one I would discuss with no one. I said at last, for I had a part to play in life, and meant to play it to the end:
“He is a good fellow. We are very happy.”
“So I hear—and I want to know how you dare be happy—you whom Tony loved—with a knave like Maurice Stair?”
My heart hurt. Oh! how my heart hurt. I wanted to get away from this cruel dying woman whose pale hands dug up old bones from their graves and strewed them in the path. I wished to go, but I could not. I had to stand there listening.
“You won’t tell me why, but I know—it was because he persuaded you with a blue ear-ring that Tony Kinsella was dead. Well! I want to tell you now that—that tale and that proof were both false. He never found the ear-ring, but had it made in Durban from a design with which I supplied him. I have waited until you were happy to tell you this. It is my revenge on you for taking Tony Kinsella from me.”
Her hand picked at the pale blue stripes of her quilt. I stood appalled at the strength of hatred that could reach out at me from a death-bed.
“Ask your husband—ask your reformed character whom you have made a Sunday-school boy of—and see what he has to say.”