Herbert stopped, drew the tiny glass of cognac toward him, sipped its contents slowly, the tenderness of tone increasing as he went on:
"She greeted me simply and kindly, and led me to a seat on the sofa beside her, where she thanked me for the trouble I had taken, her soft blue eyes fixed on mine, her gentle, high-bred features illumined with her gratitude, her silver-gray hair forming an aureole in the light of the window behind her, as she poured out her heart. Then followed question after question; she wanting every incident, every word he had uttered; what his nursing had been--all the things a mother would want to know. Altogether it was the severest ordeal I had been through since I left home--and I have had some trying ones.
"For three hours I sat there, giving her minute accounts of his illness, his partial recovery, his relapse; what remedies I had used; how he failed after the fourth day; how his delirium had set in, and how at the last he had passed peacefully away. Next I described the funeral, giving a succinct account of the preparations; how we buried him on a little hill near a spring, putting a fence around the grave to keep any one from walking over it. Then came up the question of a small head-stone. This she insisted she would order cut at once and sent out to me--or perhaps one could be made ready so that I might take it with me. All this I promised, of course, even to taking it with me were there time, which, after all, I was able to do, for my steamer was delayed. And so I left her, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes fixed on mine in gratitude for all I had done for her dead son."
"Oh!--the poor, dear lady!" cried madame la marquise, greatly moved, her hands tight clasped together. "Yes, I believe you--nothing in all your experience could have been as painful!"
Brierley raised his head and looked at Herbert:
"Rather a tight place, old man, awful tight place," and his voice trembled. "But where does the lie come in? You told her the truth, after all."
"Told her the truth! I thought you understood. Why I lied straight through! There _was_ no grave--there never had been! Her son and his three black carriers had been trapped by cannibals and eaten."