"But you must write him an apology, papa. You just must!"
"Oh, well, mebbe I will. But I'll wait till to-morrer. Better wait till the Senate confirms him though, and be certain about it."
"Oh, no! That would never do. It would be too plain,"—and Lily went into a long disquisition to fetch her hard-headed old daddy to her way of thinking. He showed some signs of relenting but could not be persuaded that night. When the morning came it took all her powers to push him to the point of sending a suitable note to Hayward: but she accomplished it. Hayward's stinging, sarcastic, withering reply was not written till late in the afternoon, and in the footman's agitation over other concerns was not mailed till his mother found it in his room on the day after that. By the time Mr. Henry Porter received it, other events had come to pass that gave it some emphasis....
When Hayward Graham returned to his room after his dismissal from Porter's house he found a letter addressed to him in his wife's writing. He tore it open hungrily.
"You say you would joyfully die to atone. That would be the very best thing you could do—the only fitting thing you could do.—H."
A grim smile lighted the man's face. At the moment the blood of some long-dead cavalier ancestor splashed through his heart, and he wrote the brief reply.
"Your wish is law, and shall be obeyed. Grant me one day to put my house in order."
* * * * *
Her maid handed the message to Helen before she was out of bed the next morning. The girl read it, caught its meaning, and shook with an ague of fear. Her love for her husband, outraged and stricken, may not have been dead—for who shall speak the last word for a woman's heart?—and her tender soul recoiled at the murder so calmly forespoken: and yet neither of these impulses was elemental in her agony of terror. Her impetuous letter of the day before, breaking a silence she had sworn to keep, was not intended as a reply to anything that Hayward had written. It was but a wild protest against the new-born realization that her situation was tragic, and could not be ignored nor long concealed. She had not meant to suggest or to counsel death, but to rail against life. The possibility of his taking-off had not occurred to her. His letter terrified her! Death!—her husband's death? It was the one thing that must not be! When she had read his words, her blood was ice. "No! No!" her teeth chattered as she dressed, "he must not, he must not!" In the nervousness, the weakness, the faintness, the sickness into which fevered meditations upon the day-old revelation had shaken her, she did not think to question the sincerity of Hayward's purpose at self-destruction. The calamity was imminent—and trebly calamitous. The chill of more than death was upon her. When she had dressed she dashed off a hurried scrawl.
"No, no, no. I did not mean that. It is not my wish that you destroy yourself. You must not. You must not! I need you—above everything I need you. If you die I am undone! Where is our marriage certificate? Or was there one? And who was that witness? Do not die, do not die. As you love me do not die!"