“You will not tell him?” Star said, with a little motion of her hand over her shoulder to indicate Mr. Rosevelt.
“No.”
“Yes, I was fearfully hungry,” she went on, with a shiver at the remembrance, and she grew very white. “Ever so many times, when I was soaking the biscuit for him, it smelled so good that I would raise it to my lips before I was aware of what I was doing; but the thought always came to me in time—‘he will die if I eat it.’ There was only a very little left that last day, and I knew if he died I should always feel as if my selfishness killed him if I deprived him of it, and I was saved.”
“I think you are the noblest girl that I ever heard of, Miss Star,” young Sherbrooke exclaimed, with reverent enthusiasm.
“Amen!” said Mr. Rosevelt’s tremulous voice, close beside them.
“Oh!” cried Star, starting and flushing, while the tears sprang into her eyes. “I did not mean that you should ever know——”
“You didn’t, eh?” the old man interrupted. “I thought so; and when I saw you two talking so earnestly together, I imagined that you were giving our young friend a few facts which I wished to know myself, so I got up from my chair and came to listen. They told me,” he went on, with emotion, after a moment, “that you saved my life; but, oh! child, you should not have tried to do it by sacrificing your own; and you would have done it on the steamer also. I shall never forget it of you, little one, you may be sure.”
He laid his hand gently on her head a moment, then turned and left them, to hide the tears that were welling to his own eyes.
“He has friends who doubtless are waiting for him,” Star said, jumping to conclusions, and as if to excuse herself for sacrificing so much, “while I have nobody since papa and mamma died.”
“But you are so young and”—so beautiful, he came near adding, but something in her earnest, uplifted eyes restrained him from speaking so familiarly, and he added, solemnly—“and it must be so hard to die with all the world before you.”