"We all sat and talked for a long while, Grace with her hand in Phil's and her eyes on his face, when she was not looking anxiously after my awkward attempts at caring for her baby; for of course Nannie had been brought out almost the first thing. I think, from the way in which she carefully avoided asking him his reasons for coming back, that she divined what they were. I imagined that she blamed me as being the prime cause; but there was nothing I could say to undeceive her. In fact, I thought it better for her to believe so than to know the truth.
"'She is miserably unhappy, George,' said Phil gloomily, as we walked away. 'But you were right not to tell me. I can do nothing to help her: I cannot even openly sympathize with her. It would have been better to have kept on thinking she was happy: there was a bitter kind of satisfaction to me in that, but still it was a satisfaction.'
"Nevertheless Phil did not go back to the mountains. He stayed on here for a month or more, dividing his time pretty equally between my office and Grace's little parlor. He very seldom met Herbert. Now and then they would be together at the cottage for half an hour, if Herbert happened to come home while he was there, and when they met on the street they would merely pass the time of day.
"One evening before going to supper I waited until after seven o'clock for Phil to come in, and just as I had given him up, and was starting away alone, he entered the office, looking pale as a ghost, and evidently in great distress of spirit.
"'For God's sake, Phil, what is the matter?' I exclaimed, as he sank upon the sofa and covered his face with his hands.
"'Go away, George: go away and leave me,' was all he said; then he got up and began walking violently up and down the room. At last he came near me and put his hand on my shoulder. 'I've killed her, George, I am afraid; At least I have killed him right before her eyes, and she may never get over it. I didn't mean to, George, you know that; but he came home drunk, and I had gone to bid Grace good-by,—for I had made up my mind, George, to leave to-morrow,—and he came in. We had been talking of father, and Grace was very sad and wretched, and there were tears in her eyes when she kissed me, just as he came in and saw us. She was frightened at his brutality, and clung to me in terror, when he began swearing in a torrent of passion and calling her the vilest of names. He struck at us with his cane. If he had struck me he might yet have been alive; but when I saw the great red welt on Grace's neck and heard her cry out, I was wild, George. For an instant, I believe, I could have stamped him into bits, and if it had been my last act on earth I could not have helped striking him.'
"While he spoke, Phil stood with his hand on my shoulder, looking into my eyes, as if he wanted me to judge him, as if he would read in my very look whether I blamed him or not. I took his hand.
"'I thought you would understand,' he went on. 'I did not know I was going to kill him, but I think I tried to: I struck him with all my might, Grace threw herself between us and begged me not to hurt him after he had fallen down, and took hold of my arm as if to hold me. But when she saw the blood running from his temple, where he had struck it on the window-sill, and how still and motionless he lay, she tried to go to him, but could not for weakness and fainting. I carried her into Mrs. Stanley's, and have not seen her since, but the doctor says she is very ill. Herbert was dead when they went into the room after I told them what had happened; and I suppose I had better give myself up to the law.'
"You can have no idea how I felt to see my dearest friend in such a position. And poor Grace!—it was much worse for her. I thought with Phil that she might never survive the shock and misery of it all. But she did, and came out, weak and broken down as she was, to give her testimony at Phil's trial. We had no trouble in getting a jury to acquit him, and he went back to Colorado without bidding Grace good-by, although she would have seen him and was even anxious to do so. Some persons here, mostly women, pretended to think that there had been more cause for Herbert's jealousy than was generally supposed; but they belonged to the sanctimonious, hypocritical custom-worshippers. All really good people remembered what Herbert had been, and refused to see in him a martyr or even a wronged man.
"After that Grace supported herself by dress-making and teaching music; and some two years ago, when we heard that Phil had been killed by a mine's caving in, and that he had left a little fortune to her and Nannie, I, as his executor and her friend, induced her to take and use it,—which she did, with simplicity and thankfulness and with her heart full of pity and love for poor Phil. Yes, poor Phil! those five or six years must have been full of misery to him, and he was probably thankful when the end came. We never heard from him until after his death. There was a letter that came to me with the will, that had been written long before. None but they two know what was in it; and I, for one, do not want to inquire."