Dr. McGee, even then a famous physician and devotedly attached to her, worked day and night over her, but it was useless; the over-strained, busy heart had given way and she lived only three days, growing feebler with every hour.
I was sitting beside her in the afternoon, trying to be cheerful, trying to cheer her with those futile subterfuges we are forced to, trying to get it all clear in my own troubled mind, when she smiled whimsically at me and begged me to spare myself such pain.
"A nurse is the last person to need such talk, dear Mr. Jerrolds," she whispered to me, and as the good deaconess who had been her first helper in her chosen work burst into tears and stumbled from the room, she put out her hand and I took it silently.
"What you have been—what you have been, Harriet!" I muttered unsteadily, and then her eyes met mine.
"What have I been?" her lips barely formed the words, "do you know?"
There in her soft brown eyes I saw at last—at once. God knows I never guessed before. They met mine so calmly, so honestly, so fearlessly—alas, they could be fearless now!
"And I have been such a fool—such a brute!"
"Hush! you never knew," she whispered, "you could not help it, my dear. It was so from the very first—when you saw my diary."
"But I might—I might have——"
Again she smiled whimsically.