“I do care!” he answered; “and I mean you to rest now all the days of your life—your new life, Missy. I have cared all the time. But now I care more than ever.”
“Your father and 'Bella——”
“Care as much as I do, pretty nearly, in their own way. Missy, dear, don't you care, too,—for me?”
She looked at him gratefully through her starting tears. “How can I help it? You picked me up out of the gutter between you; but it was you alone that kept me out of it, after I'd gone; because I sort of felt all the time that you cared. But oh, you must never marry me. I am thinking so of your mother! She will never, never forgive me; I couldn't expect it; and she is going to get quite better, you know—I feel sure that she is better already.”
He put his hand upon the hair that was only golden in the moonshine: he peered into the wan face with infinite sadness: for here it was that Missy was both right and wrong.