“You should have let me die! Life is too cruel!”
They could not scold her. They could only pity her for the awful shock she had sustained.
Only once had any one dared to name the lover who had deceived her so fatally.
“Can you not forgive him? He loved you so, and you seemed to be made for each other!” said Ada Winton gently.
The great dark eyes lifted to hers with a sombre flash, and Eva answered solemnly:
“My cousin’s blood flows like a crimson sea eternally between our hearts. Let no one ever name him to me again!”
And she sank into a strange, apathetic state, from which no one could rouse her, sitting all day with her small hands folded in her lap, her dark, solemn eyes fixed on vacancy, never a word to any one to hint at what was passing in her tortured mind.
“Unless we can rouse her to some interest in life again we shall have her back in the asylum wards soon,” sighed Doctor Bertrand on the third day, as she left after making her daily visit.
Ada Winton, who remained by her night and day, wept her bright eyes dim.
“It fairly breaks my heart. Oh, why was Doctor Ludington ever found out? I am sure it was no sin for him to marry her, as he killed her cousin by an accident,” she said over and over, and some agreed with her, while others took Eva’s view that her cousin’s death was an impassable barrier between their hearts.