“I told him so,” said the lady.
“I don’t know how to credit it,” said he. “Why, my child, I don’t think you can possibly know what you are attempting. Your friends ought never to have allowed you to conceive such a thing. You must let us dissuade you. It will not be taking too much liberty, will it? Has your husband never told you what good friends we were?”
Mary nodded and tried to speak.
“Often,” said Mrs. Thornton to her husband, interpreting the half-articulated reply.
They sat and talked in low tones, under the dismal lamp of the railroad coach, for two or three hours. Mr. Thornton came around and took the seat in front of Mary, and sat with one leg under him, facing back toward her. Mrs. Thornton sat beside her, and Alice slumbered on the seat behind, vacated by the lawyer and his wife.
“You needn’t tell me John’s story,” said the gentleman; “I know it. What I didn’t know before, I got from a man with whom I corresponded in New Orleans.”
“Dr. Sevier?”
“No, a man who got it from the Doctor.”
So they had Mary tell her own story.
“I thought I should start just as soon as my mother’s health would permit. John wouldn’t have me start before that, and, after all, I don’t see how I could have done it—rightly. But by the time she was well—or partly well—every one was in the greatest anxiety and doubt everywhere. You know how it was.”