“Oh, it may be an awful sin, for I'm told Willis had a mother”—Mrs. Dwight sighed—“but when the news came to-day that he had accidentally killed himself I became a new woman. He was the one thing I dreaded above all else, for, Carson, if he had not shot himself you and he would have met and one of you would have fallen. Oh, I'm so happy. I'm going to get well now, my boy. You will see me out on the lawn in a day or two.”
His eyes were on the floor at her feet. Why he gave so much of his mental burden to mere utterance he could not have explained, but he said: “And even if we had met, mother, and he had tried to shoot me, and—and I, in self-defence you know, had been forced to kill him—really forced—I suppose even that situation would have—disturbed you?”
“Oh, don't, don't talk of that!” Mrs. Dwight cried. “I don't think it is right to think of unpleasant things when one is happy. God did it, Carson. God did it to save you.”
“All right, mother, I was only thinking—”
“Well, think of pleasanter things,” Airs. Dwight interrupted him. “Helen's been over to see me rather oftener of late. We frequently sit and chat together. It makes me feel young again. She is very free with me about herself—that is, about everything except her affair with Mr. Sanders.”
“She doesn't talk of that much, then?” he ventured, tentatively.
“She won't talk about it at all,” said the invalid; “and that's what seems so queer about it. A woman can see deeper into a woman's heart than a man can, and I've been wondering over Helen. Sometimes I almost think—” Mrs. Dwight seemed lost in thought and unconscious of the fact that she had ceased speaking.
“You were saying, mother,” he reminded her, eagerly, “that you almost thought—”
“Why, it seems to me, Carson, that any natural girl ought to be so full of her engagement to the man she is to marry that she would really love to talk about it. Really it seems to me that Helen may be questioning her heart in this matter, but she'll end by marrying Mr. Sanders. It looks as if she has pledged herself in some way or other, and she is the very soul of honor.”
“Oh yes, she is all that,” Dwight said, in an effort at lightness. “Now, good-night, mother.”