In his inmost heart it would have helped him at that moment to have found any softness of shrinking there.
"Then you'll come when I send—you'll come and take me away?"
Was it fancy, or had she lightly stressed the "me"? He thought of how he had come first of all and taken John Gano to the South to die; how he had returned to follow his grandmother to her long home. He had a sudden vision of himself in the guise of Death. "Each time I come," he thought, "I see some one of this house off on his last journey. Soon little Emmie will be left alone."
But Emmie was not left to the last, and Ethan, though he never knew it, was responsible for her, too, turning her back upon the Fort—upon the world.
The effect of Mrs. Gano's death on a clinging and dependent nature like Emmie's was painfully apparent. Val's new-born sense of tender guardianship over her younger sister was certainly not weakened by the younger girl's confession, after he went away, of her passion for Ethan.
"I always thought it might come right for me," she said, "till—till I saw the look on his face when he bade you good-bye. When will you be married, Val?"
"I don't know, dear."
"Some time during this year?"
"I should think so."