She bent her face close to his, and impulsively kissed his cold brow with yearning lips, and murmured:
“Good-by, good-by! If you had lived I would have loved you!”
They heard her wild words, all of them. They used them against her afterward.
But, as for Eva, she had forgotten all but the man who lay before her, dying. She hardly thought that his dulled senses could comprehend her words, but, to her surprise, his drooping lids flew open wide, and a sort of radiant surprise and joy gleamed for a moment in his eyes, ere they grew dim again with the mists of death.
One of the young men knelt by him and gently, closed the staring blue eyes.
“He is gone, poor fellow!” he said gently.
All had heard Terry’s dying words, and by the verdict of the world Eva was guilty, though pure as snow in the sight of Heaven.
CHAPTER IV.
“I RENOUNCE YOU FOREVER!”
For a moment it seemed as if Gran’ther Groves would break down and weep like a woman as he saw poor Terry, his only grandson, lying dead on the floor in his young manhood, cut off so suddenly in the bloom of youth and hope.