"I want you to regain your strength, but I am trembling when I think of anything to be told. Is it anything—about—"
"Jerome? Yes, it is about him and about my self. It is about our last interview when we spoke of you. Do you still believe that he is living?"
"Yes, we are living, why should he not be alive?"
"Do yon know how old he would be?"
"He was just twenty years older than I."
"Then he must be sixty-four. That is not young, Prudence, and he had grown old when I said goodbye to him on the steamer—no, it was not a steamer, he avoided the publicity, he went in a merchant ship, there was not even one passenger beside himself. He had a fine constitution and he knew how to take care of himself; it was the—worry that made him look old. He was very warm-hearted and lovable."
"Yes," escaped Miss Prudence's lips.
"But he was weak and lead astray—it seems strange that your silver wedding day might be almost at hand, and that tall boy and girl in front of you my brother's children to call me Uncle John."
"John," she sobbed, catching her breath.
"Poor child! Now I've brought the tears. I was determined to get that dead look out of your eyes that was beginning to come to-night. It shall go away to-night and you shall not awake with it in the morning. Do you know what you want? Do you want to tell me what you pray about on your wedding day?"