Silently Mostyn left the bed and took a seat on the broad sill of one of the windows overlooking the lawn.
"What will be the end?" he asked himself. "It can't go on like this. I am not man enough to stand it. If I were not afraid of death, I would—no, I wouldn't"—he glanced at the bed—"I am responsible for his being here. He is the flower of my corruption. God may desert him, but I won't. I will protect him, love him, pity him, care for him to the end."
A cold drop fell on his hand and trickled through his fingers. He was weeping.
CHAPTER IV
Saunders spent the end of that week on his plantation in the mountains. On Saturday morning he dropped in at Drake's to see Dolly. John Webb came to the door in response to his rap. He was quite unchanged. Even the clothes he was wearing had the same look as those he wore five years before.
"She ain't here," he said. "I seed 'er, with some books an' papers under 'er arm, headed for the schoolhouse just after breakfast. I reckon she's got some examples to work or compositions to write. They are fixin' for a' exhibition of some sort for the last Friday in this month. Dolly writes a big part o' the stuff the scholars read in public, an' you bet some of it is tiptop. When she is in a good humor she can compose a' article that will make a dog laugh. She is out o' sorts to-day."
"Oh, is that so?" Saunders was moving toward the gate. "Has anything gone wrong?"
"She is bothered about George," Webb answered. "It is first one thing and then another with her. George's crop is a failure this year and he is up to his neck in debt. On top o' that he wants to get married. You know him an' Ida Benson are crazy to get tied, and it was to come off in the fall, but George won't be able to buy a new shirt, to say nothin' of a whole outfit. The boy is awful downhearted, and so is his gal. Dolly busted out an' cried last night while George was a-talkin'. She says Ida will be the makin' of the boy, but they can't stir a peg as it is, for they hain't got a dollar betwixt 'em."