"Well," she said, as he did not answer her first reply.
"My little sister, I won't have you tangling your brain up with useless speculations over things that must happen as long as the world stands and men and women live, and breathe, and have their being. Don't let me see that pretty brow all puckered up again. What would mother and I do if our household fairy became dull, and dreamy, and philosophical."
"Brother Willie, am I always to be a child?"
"Always, my sweet? Why how old are you—sixteen?"
"I am nineteen, brother, and this Mrs. Winans of whom all Norfolk is raving, who is a wife and mother—she, it is said, is barely more than twenty."
"Yes, love; but the loss of parents and friends forced Grace Grey into premature womanhood and premature responsibilities; she took up the cross early, but you, dear little one——"
A low tinkle of the door-bell cut short whatever else he meant to say, and he answered the summons himself. It was a messenger from Mrs. Conway to inquire concerning her nephew. He sent back a message that he still lay sleeping quietly. For the rest of the day the house was besieged with callers and inquirers from all parts of the city, and Captain Clendenon found himself kept busy in replying.
In the midst of it all, in his deep grief and anxiety for his friend's life, in his pity and sympathy for the exiled duelist, a fair face brooded over all his thoughts, a pang for a woman's suffering struck coldly to his heart. To know that she was mourning alone, bowed to earth in her unmerited sorrow and shame, was the height and depth of bitterness to the man who loved her tenderly and purely as he did his own little sister.
And the spring day wore to its close, and the silence of the balmy spring night, with its wandering breeze of violets, its mysterious stare, fell over all things. The string of inquirers from among the friends of the wounded man thinned out, the surgeon came and went, and still Bruce Conway lay locked in that strange pallid sleep on whose waking so many hearts hung with anxiety and dread.
At ten o'clock the captain admitted John, who had come to seek fresh tidings for his mistress. His honest black face looked up in vague, awe-struck grief at the captain's mournful features.