"I'm sorry for him now, I'm afraid he feels very lonely."
Laurence looked at her uneasily.
"Because, you see," she went on slowly, "he never thought about his soul, till just lately, or about another life. It will be very strange to him. He was so worldly."
"He was a good man," asserted Laurence, frowning.
"No, Laurence, he wasn't," said Mary with inflexible regret. "He was bound up in worldly things, and had no light. So it will be hard for him."
"I don't think you are in a position to judge him," said Laurence sharply.
But then, seeing her tears begin to flow again, he reproached himself and tried to comfort her with soft words and kisses. He resolved once more that until Mary was quite strong again he would not cross her in anything, that even if she were unreasonable he would remember her state and be patient. He was really alarmed about her, she had never been ill before, never in the least morbid. Several times lately she had frightened him by saying that she thought she would die when this baby was born; and dissolving in tears for the other two babies who would be left motherless. Altogether she was unlike herself. Laurence, profoundly worried, had talked to Mary's father, who told him that she had had her children too fast and was tired out for the time, and naturally affected by the Judge's illness, but that there was no cause for great alarm. But at the mere idea of losing Mary, Laurence was deeply shaken. He would not have said that he was happy with her—in fact for the past year he had seldom felt happy—but he couldn't imagine being anything but miserable without her. He had loved her too long, too exclusively, to live without her. And always he had the hope, though sometimes unconscious, that she would change and love him as he wanted her to. That was all that was lacking, he thought, to make him perfectly happy. He believed in happiness and never ceased to expect it.
"Laurence," said Mary, when her tears had stopped, insensibly soothed by his tenderness, "I wish the Judge hadn't left us that money. We didn't need it."
"Well, sometimes I wish so too," he answered thoughtfully.