The shot went home. He shivered, and a hollow groan escaped his lips.
"Would she have died for such a cause?" he asked, and she answered gravely, and with a touch of sadness.
"Women's hearts have broken for even lighter causes."
To herself she said, mournfully: "I should have died myself if it had not been for little Laurie's coming. I could not have lived through these weary years if it had not been for the little child that loved me!"
"Her heart was broken then," he said, "for I refused to forgive her, Mrs. Lynn. I was hard and stern and angry. But I never dreamed what would happen."
"What did she do?" inquired the brilliant novelist, with interest.
"She went away that night, Mrs. Lynn, and all search for her proved futile and vain. In a few days after a body washed up from the river—a young, golden-haired woman. They said it was Laurel, my missing wife. You know the rest. This is her grave."
Laurel looked at the grassy mound with a strange dreary wonder over the waif whom they had buried there. She wondered what her name and history had been. "Perhaps as sad as mine," she sighed to herself.
"This is her grave," he repeated. "Ah, Mrs. Lynn, you have a glowing, vivid imagination. Can you fancy what I have suffered? Can you comprehend how the demons of remorse and despair have pursued me unceasingly?"
"Then you repented when too late?" she said.