“The Young Doctor and my mother and I were with him all the time he was ill after he was shot, and the Trial had only told half the truth. He wanted us, his best friends here, to know the whole truth, so he told us that he left you because he couldn’t bear to live on your money. It was you made him feel that, though he didn’t say so. All the time he told his story he spoke of you as though you were some goddess, some great queen—”
A look of hope, of wonder, of relief came into the tiny creature’s eyes. “He spoke like that of me; he said—?”
“He said what no one else would have said, probably; but that’s the way with people in love—they see what no one else sees, they think what no one else thinks. He talked with a sort of hush in his voice about you till we thought you must be some stately, tall, splendid Helen of Troy with a soul like an ocean, instead of”—she was going to say something that would have seemed unkind, and she stopped herself in time—“instead of a sort of fairy, one of the little folk that never grow up; the same as my father used to tell me about.”
“You think very badly of me, then?” returned the other with a sigh. Her courage, her pride, her attempt to control the situation had vanished suddenly, and she became for the moment almost the child she looked.
“We’ve only just begun. We’re all his friends here, and we’ll judge you and think of you according to what happens between you and him. You wrote him that letter!”
She suddenly placed her hand on the desk as the inspiration came to her to have this matter of the letter out now, and to have Mrs. Crozier know exactly what the position was, no matter what might be thought of herself. She was only thinking of Shiel Crozier and his future now.
“What letter did I write?” There was real surprise and wonder in her tone.
“That last letter you wrote to him—the letter in which you gave him fits for breaking his promise, and talked like a proud, angry angel from the top of the stairs.”
“How do you know of that letter? He, my husband, told you what was in that letter; he showed it to you?” The voice was indignant, low, and almost rough with anger.
“Yes, your husband showed me the letter—unopened.”