" But the red lay
burning on the conscience of Helen too, and she had not murdered!
And for him who had, he gave society never a thought, but shrieked
aloud in his dreams, and moaned and wept when he waked over the
memory of the woman who had wronged him, and whom he had, if
Bascombe was right, swept out of being like an aphis from a
rose-leaf.
CHAPTER XVI.
A VANISHING GLIMMER.
Helen ran upstairs, dropped on her knees by her brother's bedside,
and fell into a fit of sobbing, which no tears came to relieve.
"Helen! Helen! if you give way I shall go mad," said a voice of
misery from the pillow.
She jumped up, wiping her dry eyes.
"What a wicked, selfish, bad sister, bad nurse, bad everything, I
am, Poldie!" she said, her tone ascending the steps of vocal
indignation as she spoke. "But shall I tell you"--here she looked
all about the chamber and into the dressing-room ere she
proceeded--"shall I tell you, Poldie, what it is that makes me so--
I don't know what?--It is all the fault of the sermon I heard this
morning. It is the first sermon I ever really listened to in my
life--certainly the first I ever thought about again after I was
out of the church.
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