"I was ill; she brought me flowers. I never had any constitution--trust
a Latin race for that--and I became very ill indeed. With a man like
you, a chill at worst; with me, pneumonia in a day. Then she came to see
me herself, saw the doctor, got in all sorts of things, and was coming
to nurse me through the night herself. God bless her for the thought
alone! I was supposed not to know; they thought I was unconscious
already. But I kept conscious on purpose, I could have lived through
anything for that alone. And she never came!
"My landlady sat up instead. She is another of the kindest women on
earth; she thought far more of me than I was ever worth, and it was she
who screened me through thick and thin during the delirium that
followed, and after that. She did not tell the whole truth at the trial;
may there be no mercy for me hereafter if the law is not merciful to
that staunch soul! She has saved my life--for this! But that night--it
was her second in succession--and she had been with me the whole long
day--that night she fell asleep beside me in the chair. I can hear her
breathing now.
"Dear soul, how it angered me at the time! It made me fret all the more
for--her.
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