For reply, Laura, waking also as from a dream, cried, "Where is mamma? Where is Margaret?"
"I did my best," Harry said, faintly. "This arm was broken before we took to the water."
"You don't mean to tell me that you let my mother drown?" Laura hissed in his ear.
"Indeed, madam, my patient is in no state to be excited," said the doctor. "Rejoice that Providence has given you back your husband, and only taken your mother."
"Only taken!" repeated Laura, almost beside herself. "Only taken my mother! Why, she was one of ten thousand! She was every body's mother! And Margaret! That noble girl! And I am to rejoice, am I!"
"There will be little to rejoice over if you go on in this way, madam," said the doctor, pointing to Harry, who had again become insensible.
This silenced her, and she spoke no more, but almost the coldness of death steeled her heart to her husband. She did not realize the self-possession he had displayed, the difficulties in his way; she did not know that if the women she lamented had been less heroic one of them might have been saved; all she knew was, they lay dead in the embrace of the river she had once thought beautiful.
"What news for poor Belle! What a shock to Frank! What consternation among mother's friends!" she thought, and tried to cry, but not a tear would come.
Slowly, when Harry came to himself, and his arm had been set, they drove home. There was the table, set for tea; there was mother's chair; there was the plate of strawberries, and the vase of flowers she had gathered with such delight. She went to the window and threw them out; who cared for fruit and flowers now?
Meanwhile, Harry had been taken up-stairs, and laid upon a couch, falling asleep the moment his head touched the pillow. She went and looked at him, and saw how the fire had singed his hair, how death-like he looked; how blistered were his hands. "But he let my mother drown," she thought.