"What?"
"That my father was suffering from heart-disease, and had already received his death-warrant."
She waited for Gordon to speak, but he was almost afraid to breathe.
"He didn't know his condition until we arrived in Egypt, and then perhaps he ought to have resigned his commission, but he had been out of the service for two years, and the temptation to remain was too much for him, so he asked me to promise to say nothing about it."
Gordon released her arms and she sat down again. He stood over her, breathing fast and painfully.
"I thought you ought to have been told at the time when we became engaged, but my father said, 'No! Why put him in a false position, and burden him with responsibilities he ought not to bear?'"
Helena's own voice was breaking now, and as Gordon listened to it he was looking down at her flushed face, which was thinner than before but more beautiful than ever in his eyes, and a hundredfold more touching than when it first won his heart.
"I tried to tell you that day, too, before you went into the General's office, so that you might see for yourself, dear, that if you separated yourself from my father I ... I couldn't possibly follow you, but there was my promise, and then ... then my pride and ... and something you said that pained and wounded me——"
"I know, I know, I know," he said.
"But now," she continued, rising to her feet again, "now," she repeated, in the same trembling voice, but with a look of joy and triumph, "now that you have told me what happened after your return to the Citadel, I see quite clearly—I am sure—perfectly sure—that my dear father died not by your hand at all, but by the hand and the will of God."