"The doctors tell me that a hundredth part of an inch more, and a friend of mine would never have known anything again," said Marvel, gravely, looking down at me with sorrowful, kind eyes.
Under this argument ad hominem I was silent, if not convinced. We are always ready to think Providence interferes in our especial behalf.
I started to ask after another who had been in the riot, but I could not frame the question. I saw that Marvel knew what I wished. I learned afterward that I had talked of her constantly during my delirium. She was well, he told me. She had not been hurt, nor had the child or old Loewen. She had left the city. Her father was involved now in a great lawsuit, the object of which Marvel did not know, and she had gone away.
"Where has she gone?"
He did not answer, and I took it for granted that he did not know.
"If I had been you, I would have found out where she went to," I said peevishly.
He took no notice of this. He only smiled. He did not say so; but I thought from his manner that she had gone abroad. He had had a note from her saying that she would be away a long time, and inclosing him a generous contribution for his poor.
"She is an angel," he said.
"Of course she is."
Though he spoke reverently, I was almost angry with him for thinking it necessary to say it at all.