"Let me speak--do let me speak. I cannot live in this silence and constraint any longer."
"Let her speak, Robert," said his mother; "it is best."
Hyacinth kissed again the kindly hand she held in hers. She took the doctor's and clasped them both together.
"You have been so kind to me," she said. "I can never repay you. I have no money to pay even for the necessaries you have given me. I know you do not want it, but I cannot understand how it is that you have been so good to me."
"My dear child," cried Mrs. Chalmers, "we have done nothing but what every Christian should. You came by accident to us, sick unto death, unhappy, friendless, and homeless, as it seemed--what less could we do than to take you in and succor you? We could not send you sick and almost dying into the streets."
"No! but you might have sent me to some hospital. I am sure that few would have done to me as you have done."
"We have only done what we thought to be right--no more."
"What you have done to me," returned Hyacinth, "I pray Heaven to return to you a thousandfold. I can never sufficiently thank you, but I want to say something else to you."
Her face grew so white, and her lips trembled so, that the doctor was on the point of forbidding another word. She looked piteously at him.
"Let me speak," she said; "the weight on my heart is so great I can hardly bear it. Were I to do what I wish, I should tell you all my story; but think of me as mercifully as you can--I am dead in life."
They looked at her in utter wonder. In the same faint voice she continued:
"I am dead to my home--I shall never see it again, and to my friends--I shall never see them again. I am dead to all the hopes that once made earth like heaven for me."
Her voice died away in a faint, moaning sob, and there was silence--silence that was broken at last by the clear, deep voice of the doctor.
"Will you tell us why this is?" he asked.
"I cannot," she replied, "I can only trust to your mercy. I cannot tell you either my name or my station, or what has slain me, when life was most sweet."
"Did you do something very wrong?" asked Mrs. Chalmers, with a shadow on her kindly face.
Hyacinth raised her beautiful eyes to the drifting clouds, which she could see from the window.