“Yes, yes. But where has she gone?” I said.
She went on with sobs, and now telling her story with a sort of fragmentary hurry: “She went out bright and shining, out of this house for ever. She was smiling, Willie—as if she was glad to be going. (“Glad to be going,” I echoed with soundless lips.) ‘You’re mighty fine for the morning,’ I says; ‘mighty fine.’ ‘Let the girl be pretty,’ says her father, ‘while she’s young!’ And somewhere she’d got a parcel of her things hidden to pick up, and she was going off—out of this house for ever!”
She became quiet.
“Let the girl be pretty,” she repeated; “let the girl be pretty while she’s young. . . . Oh! how can we go on living, Willie? He doesn’t show it, but he’s like a stricken beast. He’s wounded to the heart. She was always his favorite. He never seemed to care for Puss like he did for her. And she’s wounded him—”
“Where has she gone?” I reverted at last to that.
“We don’t know. She leaves her own blood, she trusts herself— Oh, Willie, it’ll kill me! I wish she and me together were lying in our graves.”
“But”—I moistened my lips and spoke slowly—“she may have gone to marry.”
“If that was so! I’ve prayed to God it might be so, Willie. I’ve prayed that he’d take pity on her—him, I mean, she’s with.”
I jerked out: “Who’s that?”
“In her letter, she said he was a gentleman. She did say he was a gentleman.”