With a sense of grovelling meanness, Philip sat and listened. Then, with eyes wandering across the floor, he said, “You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You did everything a man could do—everything. And she was innocent also. It was the fault of another. He came between you. Perhaps he thought he couldn't help it—perhaps he persuaded himself—God knows what lie he told himself—but she's innocent, Pete; believe me, she's——”
Pete brought his fist down heavily on the table, and the rings that lay on it jumped and tingled. “What's that to me?” he cried hoarsely. “What do I care if she's innocent or guilty? She's dead, isn't she? and that's enough. Curse the man! I don't want to hear of him. She's mine now. What for should he come here between me and my own?”
The torn heart and racked brain could bear no more. Pete dropped his head on the table. Presently his anger ebbed. Without lifting his head, he stretched his hand across the rings to feel for Philip's hand. Philip's hand trembled in his grasp. He took that for sympathy, and became the more ashamed.
“Give me time, mate,” he said. “I'll be my own man soon. My head's moithered dreadful—I'm not knowing if I heard you right. In Douglas, you say? By herself, too? Not by herself, surely? Not quite alone neither? She found you out, didn't she? You'd be there, Phil? You'd be with her yourself? She'd be wanting for nothing?”
Philip answered huskily, his eyes still wandering. “If it will be any comfort to you... yes, I was with her—she wanted for nothing.”
“My poor girl!” said Pete. “Did she send—had she any—maybe she said a word or two—at the last, eh?”
Philip clutched at the question. There was something at last that he could say without falsehood. “She sent a prayer for your forgiveness,” he said. “She told me to tell you to think of her as little as might be; not to grieve for her too much, and to try to forget her, so that her sin also might be forgotten.”
“And the lil one—anything about the lil one?” asked Pete.
“That was the bitterest grief of all,” said Philip. “It was so hard that you must think her an unnatural mother. 'My Katherine! My little Katherine! My sweet angel!' It was her cry the whole day long.”
“I see, I see,” said Pete, nodding at the fire; “she left the lil one for my sake, wanting it with her all the while. Poor thing! You'd comfort her, Philip? You'd let her go aisy?”