“Yes, Phebe, thank you; it was kind in your mother; and now, please go; my head is aching badly,” she said; and motioning Phebe from the room, she thrust the blood-stained rose into her bosom and went again to her bed, where she lay until her mother came to see what she was doing.
There were no tears on Heloise’s cheeks, no trace of them in her eyes, but her white face told volumes to Mrs. Fordham, who laid her hand on her daughter’s hair, saying, kindly:
“I never knew you cared so much for him. Poor boy, I am so sorry. He looks very natural. Would you like to see him?”
“No, mother, not now,” was the answer, and that was all that passed between them on the subject of Abelard that day.
Heloise was very sick with headache and kept her room, and at night her mother brought her toast and tea, and tried to make her eat, and told her how kind the Schuylers were, and what a sweet little boy Godfrey was, and how badly he felt at Abelard’s death. He had been to see the body, and his mother had been there, too, and Mrs. Fordham dwelt upon her fine manners and handsome dress, and Godfrey’s velvet suit and manly face, until Heloise felt as if she should go mad, and begged her mother to leave her.
She hated the Schuylers one and all, for through them Abelard had met his death, and she did not dare look into the future or question what it had in store for her. She only felt that all the brightness of her life had been suddenly stricken out, leaving her utterly hopeless and desolate, and long after her mother was asleep in the next room she lay awake wondering what she should do, and if, as she feared, it would be necessary for her to tell. And even if it were not necessary, was it right for her to withhold the secret which was torturing her so cruelly? Was it just to Abelard, and did it not look as if she were ashamed of the past as connected with him?
“I am not, darling, I am not!” she moaned; “and to-morrow, when they lower you into the grave, I will be there, and, in a voice everybody can hear, I’ll tell the truth, and face the entire world, mother and all.”
The facing mother was the hardest part of all, and Heloise felt her pulse quicken and her head throb violently as she fancied her mother’s look of surprise and anger when she heard the story which she meant to tell at the grave, and, while thinking how she should combat that anger and reproach, the early summer morning crept into her room, and she heard the watchers with the dead go through the yard into the street, and knew that another day had come.
CHAPTER III.
THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL.
