He handed her the letter, which she read. It ran thus:
“My dear Friend,—This is written to give Miss Andros some unhappy information that she ought to have at the earliest safe and proper moment, and as a precaution against my breaking down before that moment arrives. To have told her at first might have prevented her recovery. The proper moment to tell her will have arrived when she is in safe hands. I trust that they may be yours, and I know that you will show her every kindness that your generous soul can yield.
“It is this: Her father lost his life in the accident on the grade, by the falling of a tree upon him. His body rests under the earth in the farther end of the cave into which the rear door of my cabin opens. The grave is marked with a board giving his name. Nailed up in a box near the door are his personal effects.
“Give this letter to my afflicted friend. It will convey no hint of the profound sympathy that I feel, nor of what I suffer in thus raising my hand to deal her so cruel a blow.
“I can only crave her forgiveness for deceiving her both as to her father’s death and my being a physician.”
The eager hope, the anxiety, the absorption of her entire self in the stricken man at her feet, fled before the crushing whirlwind of grief that now overwhelmed her. The loss of her father was the loss of the anchor of her life, the loss of the one sure thing upon which her soul rested, in which she knew peace, security, sympathy, and strength. She spoke no word, but gazed far down the canon, a picture of complete desolation. Dr. Malbone stood beside her, looking down thoughtfully into the face of his friend. The men, relieved from their work of bringing back a faint glow of the flickering life on the ground, moved away silently, with the instinctive delicacy of their kind, knowing that they were facing a tragedy that they did not understand.
The letter fell from the young woman’s hand as she still gazed in mute agony down the canon. A slight swaying of her form warned Dr. Malbone that his time for action had arrived.
“A noble life still is left to us,” he quietly said, without looking up, and with a certain unsteadiness in his voice; “and it appeals to us for all that we have to give of help and strength and sympathy.”
It was a timely word. Instantly she dragged herself out of the crushing tumult into which she had been plunged.
“Yes,” she said, radiant with love and towering above the wreck that encompassed her, “the noblest of all lives is still left to us, and it shall have all that lies in us to give.”