“Oh!” cried Florida with a shudder, starting away from him, “did you think I was such a wicked girl as that?”
It was no defense, no explanation, no denial; it simply left the case with Ferris as before. He stood looking like a man who does not know whether to bless or curse himself, to laugh or blaspheme.
She stooped and tried to pick up the things she had let fall upon the floor; but she seemed not able to find them. He bent over, and, gathering them together, returned them to her with his left hand, keeping the other in the breast of his coat.
“Thanks,” she said; and then after a moment, “Have you been hurt?” she asked timidly.
“Yes,” said Ferris in a sulky way. “I have had my share.” He glanced down at his arm askance. “It’s rather conventional,” he added. “It isn’t much of a hurt; but then, I wasn’t much of a soldier.”
The girl’s eyes looked reverently at the conventional arm; those were the days, so long past, when women worshipped men for such things. But she said nothing, and as Ferris’s eyes wandered to her, he received a novel and painful impression. He said, hesitatingly, “I have not asked before: but your mother, Miss Vervain—I hope she is well?”
“She is dead,” answered Florida, with stony quiet.
They were both silent for a time. Then Ferris said, “I had a great affection for your mother.”
“Yes,” said the girl, “she was fond of you, too. But you never wrote or sent her any word; it used to grieve her.”
Her unjust reproach went to his heart, so long preoccupied with its own troubles; he recalled with a tender remorse the old Venetian days and the kindliness of the gracious, silly woman who had seemed to like him so much; he remembered the charm of her perfect ladylikeness, and of her winning, weak-headed desire to make every one happy to whom she spoke; the beauty of the good-will, the hospitable soul that in an imaginably better world than this will outvalue a merely intellectual or aesthetic life. He humbled himself before her memory, and as keenly reproached himself as if he could have made her hear from him at any time during the past two years. He could only say, “I am sorry that I gave your mother pain; I loved her very truly. I hope that she did not suffer much before”—