A Terrible Secret: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

"If I had only known! if I had only known!" was again her cry.

"If you had—if he had told—I believe with you all would have been well. But it is too late to think of that—he believed differently. The terrible secret of the father has wrought its terrible retribution upon the son. If he had told you when he returned from Poplar Lodge, you would have been happy together to-day. You are so strong—your mind so healthful—some of your strength and courage would have been imparted to him. But it is too late now—all is over—we have only to make him happy while he is left with us."

"Too late! too late!" Edith's heart echoed desolately. In those hours of his death she was nearer loving her husband than perhaps she could ever have been had he lived.

"I will send breakfast up here," said Inez, turning to go; "when you have breakfasted, go to him at once. He is awake and waiting for you."

Edith made her toilet. Breakfast came; and, despite remorse and grief, when one is nineteen one can eat. Then she hurried away to the sick-room.

He was lying much as she had left him, propped up among the pillows—his face whiter than the linen and lace, whiter than snow. By daylight she saw fully the ghastly change in him—saw that his fair hair was thickly strewn with gray, that the awful, indiscribable change that goes before was already on his face. His breathing was labored and panting—he had suffered intensely with spasms of the heart all night, sleeping none at all. This morning the paroxysms of pain had passed, but he lay utterly worn and exhausted, the cold damp of infinite misery on his brow, the chill of death already on hands and limbs. He lay before her, the total wreck of the gallant, hopeful, handsome gentleman, whom only one year ago she had married.

But the familiar smile she knew so well was on his lips and in his eyes as he saw her. She could not speak for a moment as she looked at him—in silence she took her place close by his side.

He was the first to break the silence, in a voice so faint as hardly to be more than a whisper. "How had she slept—how did she feel? She looked pale, he thought—surely she was not ill?"

"I?" she said bitterly. "O, no—I am never ill—nothing ever seems to hurt hard heartless people like me. It is the good and the generous who suffer. I have the happy knack of making all who love me miserable, but my own health never fails. I don't dare to ask you what sort of night you have had—I see it in your face. My coming brings, as it always does, more ill than good."

"No," he said, almost with energy; "a hundred times no! Ah, love! your coming has made me the happiest man on earth. I seem to have nothing left to wish for now. As to the night—the spasms did trouble me, but I feel deliciously easy and at rest this morning, and uncommonly happy. Edith, I talked so much last evening I gave you no chance. I want you to tell me now all about the year that has gone—all about yourself."