"Yes, I was crying for him," replied Teola. "He is dead, you know."
For one instant Tess thought the world had lost its sun. Her face creased into lines, which tightened rope-like under the tanned skin. How could Frederick have died, and she not have known? She rose unsteadily to her feet, uttering one grunt significant of her suffering.
"Were he drowned?" she asked, in a voice so pained that Teola raised her head and looked at her. She did not understand the meaning of the whitened lips nor of the tense drawing-down of the long red-brown eyes.
"No," she replied slowly, "he was killed in the fire on the hill last winter."
The muscles relaxed in the squatter's face. Her legs refused to bear the slender body, and Tessibel dropped again at Teola's side. The kiss she had cherished burned hot upon her lips. Her student lived. The minister's daughter cried for the other one, for him who had called her Miss Skinner, and who afterward helped her smuggle Frederick into the opera-house.
"Why! he air been dead a long time, ain't he?"
"Yes; six months."
"And ye air a-lovin' him yet?"
"Yes."