"True?" she wrinkled her brow. "Of course it was true." It was evidently not a question that she had expected.
"Oh, I told you the truth then. Do you doubt it? Why should you ask these things again?"
I paused. Certainly she was not to hear that ugly story if it were not true and I could in any way prevent it.
"It may seem very strange to you," said I, "but some day I will tell you all about it. I have to know this now: Do you mean that it is true you have a sister, that her name is Miriam, and that she is—that she was Doctor Reid's wife?" The question was out at last, and my heart stopped for the answer.
"Why, yes," she answered, in the same disinterested tone, as if she were telling dry facts in distant history—"Miriam married Walter when he came back from studying abroad. She only lived about a year. They had a little girl, you know, that lived not more than about an hour. I think if she had lived, Miriam would have lived too. But it was too much for her to bear. She died three days after her baby died."
The unshed tears were falling now, falling quietly in the mere physical relief of tender sorrow. Every rigid line of tragedy and pain had disappeared, and her trouble came upon her naturally, like sleep, a relaxation and a rest after hot-eyed days. I did not even feel any sorrow for her, so full was I of the new certainty that we were free. Very reverently I came closer to her, and like a child she turned to me and hid her face against my shoulder. So we rested for a space. I do not think that either of us had any definite thought—only that peace wrapped us like a garment and that the tension of the past few weeks had somehow vanished away. At last Lady drew herself quietly from me, half smiling as she brushed away her tears.
"I have been very silly," she whispered, "but it's all over now. It was good of you to let me cry," and she reached her hand toward me with a gesture so intimately grateful that my love fairly broke its bounds, and I caught it almost fiercely in my own.
"Lady, Lady dearest," I cried, "can't you see what it all means? Oh, my dear, you must see. I love you. That is all I know in the world, and nothing else matters or can matter."
"No, no—you must not—" she drew back from me frightened. "You must not tell me that. You have no right—and you are spoiling it all."