Mrs. Boynton's
eyes were closed, her breath came and went quickly, but presently
she began to speak hurriedly, as if she were relieving a
surcharged heart.
"There is something troubling me," she began, "and it would ease
my mind if I could tell it to some one who could help. Your hand
is so warm and so firm! Oh, hold mine closely and let me draw in
strength as long as you can spare it; it is flowing, flowing from
your hand into mine, flowing like wine. . . . My thoughts at
night are not like my thoughts by day, these last weeks. . . . I
wake suddenly and feel that my husband has been away a long time
and will never come back. . . . Often, at night, too, I am in
sore trouble about something else, something I have never told
Ivory, the first thing I have ever hidden from my dear son, but I
think I could tell you, if only I could be sure about it."
"Tell me if it will help you; I will try to understand," said
Waitstill brokenly.
"Ivory says Rodman is the child of my dead sister. Some one must
have told him so; could it have been I? It haunts me day and
night, for unless I am remembering wrong again, I never had a
sister. I can call to mind neither sister nor brother."
"You went to New Hampshire one winter," Waitstill reminded her
gently, as if she were talking to a child.
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