“How long were you married before you lost your husband?”
“Nobbut a year,” she returned; “scarce a year.”
“So short a time! How very sad. It must have seemed hard to you that he should go to sea and leave you—but of course he had to do it.”
“Yigh, ma’am, he had to do it—but I took it very ill.”
Her voice had sunk, so that the words were scarcely audible; it seemed to me that there were tears in the dark eyes. Impulsively leaving my chair I knelt down by her side, taking the worn hands in mine.
“It is all forgiven now,” I said. “The few hasty words are forgotten, but the memory of the love remains.”
“Ah,” she said, still speaking half to herself, “all’s forgiven now—all wur forgiven long sin’—before he deed. He thought of me before he deed, and loved me jest same as ever. He looked at me so lovin’—God rest him! He was never one to bear a grudge.”
“But I thought you said he died at sea.”
“Yigh, he deed at say, fur sure,” she added, looking at me as though in surprise; “but I knowed he loved me and forgave me.”
“Some of his comrades told you all about it, I suppose?”