But the reader did not stop.
"'Of course, I am interested,'" read Nellie, "'in your daily doings in the country, so do not chide me for not asking more questions. I should like to know the number of cows your Uncle Reuben keeps, and if the cheese factory is running on full time. These items savor of rural thrift, and as the farmer is the backbone of the country, I would not eliminate him—scratch him as it were—from our worldly calculations. The cows, the cheese factory and Uncle Reuben, however, stand in the dim background fading into the hazy purple of the tree-lined brook, as I think of you, my May Queen, laughing, in the center of the picture. When I correspond with Uncle Reuben it will be by telegram at my end of the line.
"'Before I close to-night I must again assure you that a happier view of the outlook for the coming two months will be taken. Your happiness must be mine:
"'Well! thou art happy, and I feel
That I should thus be happy, too;
For still my heart regards thy weal
Warmly—'"
"Stop, Nellie! James Hosley, you wrote that letter! Do you deny it?"
Gabrielle Tescheron crumpled Hygeia's note in her clenched hand as she said that, and arose, fastening her steady eyes on the crouching form of the cripple, who appeared to cringe under the blast of the storm. He had tried to be prepared, but he failed utterly when he attempted to speak. He was seen to raise his hand and elevate his eyebrows, but now words were impossible; a low murmur and heavy breathing, an effort to stand and a surrender in despair to the hopelessness of his fate, were all that marked Jim Hosley's resistance to this accusation.
"You wrote this letter—you wrote the others—do you deny it?"
This came quickly after the first question from her lips; her manner completely changed, betraying the nervous strain under which she suppressed her emotions, as she bravely faced the man for whom the world had seemed a small sacrifice. Jealousy might have waged its battle in privacy; but the revelation of a detestable crime so convincingly corroborated by this letter from the nurse, whose pricking conscience had at last reported my version of Hosley with her view of the ownership and purpose of the damaging poetic documents, outlined to Gabrielle's quick intelligence the method of a deep, patiently pursued course of crime. Her father's claims, to which her deaf ears had been turned in the ardor of youth, came now with terrible force to win instant conviction. She would not falter in the crisis. The man should be given a hearing—brief, to be sure—but he should have it.
"Speak!" The command brought the Gibsons to their feet, but Jim was paralyzed and dumb. After a long pause, he took all the responsibility for my folly and pleaded:
"I wrote it, Gabrielle—and forgive me."
"Then you must leave this house at once. You go your way and I shall see you no more. I know it all now. This letter from the nurse—Mr. Hopkins—my father—they were right. I have been blind. You have deceived me, just as you deceived this poor woman, whose awful fate I know. Mr. and Mrs. Gibson and Nellie"—she turned, grasping her chair—"you have been kind friends. If I have imposed on your hospitality, you will forgive me—"
Unstrung and in tears, she threw herself into Mrs. Gibson's outstretched arms, and Nellie and her mother, overcome with surprise and grief, supported her as she walked into another room.