“And I love her, too,” she said; “somehow I know she would not have forgotten me.”
“No, no, she would not!” Rupert cried; and they knelt together, hand in hand, looking into each other’s eyes as tenderly as children.
“I have been lonelier than you,” he said; “I have had nobody.”
“Your mother died, too, when you were very young?”
“Yes, Sheba,” hesitating a moment. “I will tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“Uncle Tom loved her. He left his home partly because he could not stay and see her marry a man who—did not deserve her.”
“Did she marry someone like that?” she asked.
His forehead flushed.
“She married my father,” he said, “and he was a drunken maniac and broke her heart. I saw it break. When I first remember her, she was a lovely young girl with eyes like a gazelle’s—and she cried all their beauty away, and grew tired and old and haggard before I was twelve. He is dead, but I hate him!”