"Not at all," was her confident answer. "I know you, and so I know nothing could make you break your word."
"There's some truth in that,"—and I hope that I do not deceive myself in thinking I was honest there. "More truth, perhaps, than you guess."
She looked shrewdly at me—and friendlily. "Don't be too sure I haven't guessed," said she. "Nobody's ever so blind as he lets others think. It's funny, isn't it? There are things in your mind that you'd never tell me, and things in my mind that I'd never tell you. And each of us guesses most of them, without ever letting on." She laughed queerly, and struck the horse smartly so that he leaped into a gait at which conversation was impossible.
When we resumed, the subject was the details of our wedding.
At home again, I found my mother too ill to leave her bed. She had been ill before,—many times when she wouldn't confess it, several times when she was forced to admit it, but never before so ill that she could not dress and come down stairs. "I shall be up to-morrow," she assured me, and I almost believed her. She drew a letter from under her pillow. "This came while you were away," she went on. "I kept it here, because—" a look of shame flitted across her face, and then her eyes were steady and proud again,—"why should I be ashamed of it? I had the impulse to destroy the letter, and I'm not sure but that I'm failing in my duty."
I took it,—yes, it was from Boston, from Betty. I opened it and fortunately had nerved myself against showing myself to my mother. There was neither beginning nor end, just a single sentence:
"From the bottom of my broken heart I am thankful that I have been spared the horror of discovering I had bound myself for life to a coward."
The shot went straight to the center of the target. But——There lay my mother—did she not have the right to determine my destiny—she who had given me my life and her own? I tore up Betty's letter, and I looked at mother and said, "There's nothing in that to make me waver—or regret." It was the only lie I ever told her. I told it well, thank God, for she was convinced, and the look in her face repaid me a thousandfold. It repays me once more as I write.
Carlotta and I were married at her bedside, and she lived only until the next day but one. When the doctor told me of the long concealed mortal disease that was the cause of her going, he ended with: "And, Mr. Sayler, it passes belief that she managed to keep alive for five years. I can't understand it." But I understood. She simply refused to go until she felt that her mission was accomplished.
"We must never forget her," said Carlotta, trying to console me by grieving with me.