"The Young Doctor and my mother and I were with him all the time he was
ill after he was shot, and the Trial had only told half the truth. He
wanted us, his best friends here, to know the whole truth, so he told us
that he left you because he couldn't bear to live on your money. It was
you made him feel that, though he didn't say so. All the time he told
his story he spoke of you as though you were some goddess, some great
queen--"
A look of hope, of wonder, of relief came into the tiny creature's eyes.
"He spoke like that of me; he said--?"
"He said what no one else would have said, probably; but that's the way
with people in love--they see what no one else sees, they think what no
one else thinks. He talked with a sort of hush in his voice about you
till we thought you must be some stately, tall, splendid Helen of Troy
with a soul like an ocean, instead of"--she was going to say something
that would have seemed unkind, and she stopped herself in time--"instead
of a sort of fairy, one of the little folk that never grow up; the same
as my father used to tell me about."
"You think very badly of me, then?" returned the other with a sigh.
Her courage, her pride, her attempt to control the situation had vanished
suddenly, and she became for the moment almost the child she looked.
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