“Why, Mona,” I exclaimed, “can’t you speak?”
She shook her head.
“Nor sing, I mean?”
Another shake.
“Do you mean to say you have lost your voice?”
A nod.
For a moment a shadow settled upon her face, occasioned, no doubt, by my falling countenance, for I must have shown something of the great shock to my feelings. Mona without the voice of Mona! I could not at once realize the depth of my loss. And now it was her turn to attempt to restore my spirits, as we fell back to our original mode of conversing. I urged her to make an effort to sing, and she told me she had tried many times, and that it had grieved her to be so unsocial while I was toiling so hard to save her life.
“Why, my dear,” I answered, “I thought you were angry with me for speaking to you again about my love.”
Her reply was a look so full of tenderness that I was almost sure that, if she had had her voice, she would have used it more kindly than before. Still it may have been only compassion.
By this time we had found our carriage and were on our way home, and I am sure that if, on our arrival, our friends had judged from our looks, they would have supposed I, and not Mona, had experienced a great misfortune.