"If I love you, shall you ever speak so again?" inquired Harry.
"Never, with you and God to help me," she responded.
She rose to her feet, led the boy to her chair, and once more held him in her embrace.
"You can do me a great deal of good, Harry—a great deal more good than you know, or can understand. Men and women make me worse. There is nobody who can protect me like a child that trusts me. You can trust me."
Then they sat a long time in a silence broken only by Harry's sobs, for the excitement and the reaction had shaken his nerves as if he had suffered a terrible fright.
"You have never told me your whole name, Harry," she said tenderly, with the design of leading him away from the subject of his grief.
"Harry Benedict."
He felt the thrill that ran through her frame, as if it had been a shock of electricity. The arms that held him trembled, and half relaxed their hold upon him. Her heart struggled, intermitted its beat, then throbbed against his reclining head as if it were a hammer. He raised himself, and looked up at her face. It was pale and ghastly; and her eyes were dimly looking far off, as if unconscious of anything near.
"Are you ill?"
There was no answer.