She slid from her chair and kneeled close beside the bed, bending over towards him with the most affectionate interest.
"Oh no," she said, no agitation in her voice. "Do you think that three months has done this? My family are all consumptive—my father died of the disease. What was done to me"—her voice faltered for just one moment, then she calmed it again by an obvious effort—"What was done to me, was done long before and by another hand."
"Stop!" he interrupted her as she was evidently about to proceed. "I must say one word about him. Did you ever know all the reason why each of us feared and hated the other so much?"
Merely a sad shake of the head was the negative.
"I will tell you, now. I was a coward, and he knew it. You knew so much before, but nothing else, I believe. He was present once when I fainted at the very sight of blood—something that I believe I always used to do; and he knew of my refusing a challenge because I really dared not fight. He could expose and ruin me, and I feared him. I knew him to be a scoundrel in money affairs as well as in every other way: as a lawyer I could put my finger on a great crime that he had committed to win a large part of his fortune. He knew that I knew it, and that I would have exposed him if I dared. So he feared and hated me, and each held the other in check without doing more. It is time that you should know that crime: it was his robbing you of every dollar left you by your father, and putting them all into his own pocket, through the pretended machinery of that Dunderhaven Coal and Mining Company, of which he was President, Director and all the officers!"
"Carlton! Carlton! can this be true, even of him?" asked the young girl, horrified at this crowning proof of a depravity beyond conception and yet not beyond fact.
"It is true, every word of it, and if I had not been a wretch unfit to live, I would have exposed and punished him long ago. Lately I think I must have gone through what they call 'baptizing in fire,' and the very day I am able to crawl once more to Dr. Pomeroy's house, I shall force him to meet me in a duel or shoot him down like a dog!"
"This from you, Carlton Brand!" The tone was very piteous.
"Yes—why not?" The tone was hard and decided, for a sick man.
"May heaven forgive you the thought. Now listen to me. You have been the dearest friend I ever had in the world. You have been better and truer to me than any brother; and you have done me the greatest of all favors by sending me here to nurse the sick and wounded, to win back something of my lost self-respect and close up a wasted life with a little usefulness before I die! But after all this I shall almost hate you—I shall not be able, I am afraid, to pray for you in that land I am so soon going to visit,—if you do not make me one solemn promise and keep it as you would save your own soul."