"Promise, beforehand, that you will not hate me."
"I could not hate you, mother," he said, gently.
Burying her face still deeper in the folds of her handkerchief, while her form swayed to and fro, she told him all in broken words. At length she had finished, and a silence like death fell between them. Raising her head slowly from the folds of her handkerchief, she cast her eyes fearfully in his direction. To her intense amazement, she saw him leaning back comfortably in his seat.
"Hubert!" she gasped, "are you not bitterly angry with me? Speak!"
"I was very angry, I confess, mother, when this was first known to me; but I have had time since to think the matter over calmly. You acted under the pressure of intense excitement, I concluded, and pride, which was always your besetting sin, mother; and that gained the ascendency over you to the extent that you would rather have seen Jessie in a prison cell, though she was innocent, than see her my wife!"
"You knew it before I told you?" she exclaimed. "But how did you find out?"
"That must be my secret, for the time being, mother," he returned. "Be thankful that no harm came from your nefarious scheme. If Jessie had been thrown into a prison cell and persecuted unjustly, I admit that I should never have forgiven you while life lasted. Now, every thought is swallowed up in the fear that her illness may terminate as yours did, mother. But this I say to you: if she were the most-scarred creature on the face of the earth, I should still love her and wish to marry her."
"I should not oppose it, my son," said his mother.
The terrible calamity which Mrs. Varrick had so long dreaded had not happened—her son had not turned against her.
We will pass over the fortnight that followed. Heaven had been merciful. Despite the fact that she had nursed Mrs. Varrick day and night, she herself had suffered but a slight attack of the dread contagion, and there were tears in both Hubert's and his mother's eyes when the doctor informed them that there would be no trace of the dread disease on the girl's fair face.