“You finished her. It was a bit cruel, but it had to be done.”
Daniel’s flush deepened. He seemed about to speak, then hesitated and said nothing. They heard him slowly ascending the stairs to his room.
“He’s going to be a great lawyer, papa,” said Mrs. Carter with a flash of pleasure.
Mr. Carter nodded his head gravely, assenting, his eyes on Leigh.
Daniel went heavily up-stairs to his room. He tried not to think of what Emily had said, but he couldn’t shut it out of his mind. His thoughts kept hovering back to it, like wretched singed moths making their last fascinated plunge for the flame of the candle; the plunge that was sure to take their remaining wings off.
He shut the door of his room and walked slowly across to the window opposite. He had had this room from his boyhood. At first he had shared it with William, but the elder brother had been promoted to a better apartment when he began to succeed at Payson’s. Through long months of illness, after the fall that lamed him, Daniel had remained in the small upper room where the slant of the gable made a queer triangle that couldn’t be decorated. The furniture was simple enough and rather sparse, but he had put up some bookshelves for himself, and they were well filled now with books on common law. Still hanging beside the bed was the picture of Virginia that he had taken from the library; but he did not look at it now.
He went to the window and opened the shutters wide, disclosing a square of sky where the white clouds floated; but he did not look up. In spite of himself he looked down. His window commanded a view of Denbigh Crossing, and involuntarily his eyes turned in that direction. He saw nothing but the thick foliage of a group of chestnuts, and the winding road disappearing under the arches of their wide branches.
He stood for some time looking gloomily at the prospect. He knew intuitively how his brother felt. William wanted to grovel in the dirt at Virginia’s feet and beg her pardon; but would he dare to do it? Daniel remembered Virginia sitting at the piano with the childish face of William in its frame above her head. Daniel had never doubted that she loved his brother.
Then the scene in the court-room came back to him, and Fanchon’s small, quivering face. It had wrung his heart to drag her story from her, even to save Leigh; but he had done it—without mercy, too. And now——
His thoughts broke off suddenly, for the door opened, and Leigh came in and shut it behind him. The boy was white and shaken. He put out an unsteady hand and clutched at the back of a chair.