Page:The New Penelope.djvu/78

 You never told me his name was Arthur," I remarked, thinking to weaken the intensity of her feelings by referring to a trifling circumstance.

"Why have I not died before this time?" she exclaimed, unheeding my attempt at diversion. "This is too much, too much!"

"Perhaps there is still happiness in store for you, my dear Mrs. Greyfield," I said. "Strange as is this new dispensation, may there not be a blessing in it?"

She remained silent a long time, as if thinking deeply. "He has a daughter," she at length remarked; "and Benton says she is very sweet and loveable."

"And motherless," I added, not without design. I had meant only to arouse a feeling of compassion for a young girl half-orphaned; but something more than was in my mind had been suggested to hers. She quickly raised herself from a reclining posture, threw off the concealing handkerchief, and gazed intently in my face, while saying slowly, as if to herself: "Not only motherless, but according to law, fatherless."

"Precisely," I answered. "Her mother was in the same relation to Mr. Greyfield, that you were in to Mr. Seabrook; but happily she did not know it in her lifetime."

"Nor he—nor he! Arthur Greyfield is not to be spoken of in the same breath with Mr. Seabrook."

The spirit with which this vindication of her former husband was made, caused me to smile, in spite of the dramatic interest of the situation. The smile did not escape her notice.

"You think I am blown about by every contending breath of feeling," she said, wearily; "when the truth is, I am trying to make out the right of a case in which there is so much wrong; and it is no easy thing to do."

"But you will find the right of it at last," I answered. "You are not called upon to decide in a moment upon a matter of such weight as this. Take time, take rest, take counsel."