They suspected that while glad to have the girl out of the way, she might feel squeamish over downright murder.
So they decided that it was just as well not to tell her that they had tracked the hapless girl to the negro cabin, and having seen her fall senseless on the floor, had fired the ramshackle old place in front of both doors and fled.
As the cabin had burned completely to the ground, they supposed that their victim had perished in the flames; but their guilty consciences had never permitted them to venture near the debris to see if her charred bones remained a mute witness of their awful deed.
As the winter wore away and no more was heard of Dainty or her mother, they confidently looked on the girl as dead; but if their consciences reproached them for their sin, they allowed no sign of it to appear on their careless faces as they plunged into every gayety offered by their new position. The winter had been an epoch in their hitherto poverty-stricken lives, and they made the most of it, Mrs. Ellsworth giving them a lavish allowance, and permitting them to travel with friends wherever they chose.
Thus they had had a trip to California in December, and on returning in February had been given glimpses of the gay season in New York and Washington before returning in March to silent, gloomy Ellsworth, where the mistress had remained inflexibly on guard over her step-son, lest the doctors, peradventure, should do something to restore his mind.
"That meddlesome old Doctor Platt keeps on hoping for something to happen. The other physicians have given it up, and say that Love will be an idiot for life. He is sure that if the bullet could be removed, he would be restored; but I will not permit them to cut into the poor boy's head, and perhaps destroy his life as well as his reason," she often complained, until the old doctor gave up all hopes of gaining her consent to the operation that he wished performed.
But he still came to visit Love in a friendly way, although the young man continued in the same state of seeming hopeless idiocy, never improving with the lapse of time, until, in desperation, the old man, with Franklin's assistance, concocted a daring scheme.
He had read with contempt and abhorrence the mind of the woman, and knew that she wished to keep her step-son in his present state, and that no proposition looking to his cure would be entertained by the selfish creature who wished to keep her grip on the young man's property. She would rather see him dead than restored to his rich dower of brains and wealth.
So when, late in March, she was first informed by Franklin, and afterward by Doctor Platt himself, of a change for the worse in the patient, she was more pleased than sorry.
Love's condition was changing, they said, from simple idiocy to active insanity that would necessitate his removal from Ellsworth to a place of close confinement.