"Forgive me," then she spoke. "I thought you knew. I have been Leslie Walcott's wife these four months."
As he sat beside his solitary hearth there was a fumbling outside the door. He opened to admit old Ailsie, now crippled with rheumatic pains.
"I know'd dat was you. Marse Doctor, 'n I follered yer, I want to tell yer:--Mistress 'splained all 'bout dat 'fore she died. Dey wan't nothin' wrong. Her an' her ma was 'feared to let old Master know she hed run 'way an' married Marse Henry. He said he wan't gwine ter will her nary cent. So mistess and her sister, Miss Ellen, arter while, dey fotch her up to de springs. Den ole master he died sudden like, an' Marse Henry, he had done ben 'way off to New Auleens--never know'd dey had fooled old Master 'bout de chile an' all dat. Po' Mistress! she nebber could tell him no better, and she was always skeerd-like arter she seed you agin. But she sot right down dat day and writ all about it to you an' I goes and gives de letter to dat purty white lady what was sich a good frien', and den she gimme yourn, ain----"
"Yes, yes, Auntie, I know--I have the letters here----at last," he added in low, husky tones.
The _Louisville Journal_ of the next New Year, under date of January 9, contained the following notice, with lengthy editorial comment:
"Died suddenly last night, of heart disease, at the close of the Military Ball, at the Capitol Hotel, Frankfort, the Hon. Leslie Walcott, age thirty-two years."
Did hope stretch out an alluring hand to one lonely reader?
"But surely you do not realize, Robert Garrett, that when you foreclose this mortgage you leave us virtually penniless;" and the large dark eyes of the suppliant were blinded by an agony of tears.
"Really, madam, I regret to seem hard;" and the polished courtesy of the cold, harsh voice fell with heavy weight upon her strained senses. "Your husband has had more time now than any law allows, human or divine."
"Oh, how gladly he would have paid the debt;" she moaned; "it was his kindness and forbearance to others--kindness that seemed imperative. He could not take the law against his crippled brother, his mother's dying legacy to him. You know all this--you know, too, that if you will only grant a little longer respite he can settle the claim, or the greater part of it. How then can you be so cruel as to drive us out of doors! You who need nothing of this world's goods!"