“He did,” briefly responded Madame Winthrop, and Salome felt herself growing dizzy, and there was a ringing sound in her ears; but controlling herself by a mighty effort, she demanded: “Did he tell you that he was prompted solely by gratitude?” “Let me tell you what he did say,” said madam, evading a direct reply to this searching question. “I charged him with having simply a feeling of pity for your forlorn condition and of gratitude for what you had done; I asked him just what you have asked me. ‘Can you honestly say,’ I asked, ‘that gratitude did not prompt you to make her your wife?’” “And his answer?” breathed Salome, with a wild look in her eyes, a spot of fire on each cheek. “‘No, I cannot,’ he replied, ‘for it was a feeling of profound gratitude for the girl’s noble sacrifice of her life-blood to save me’—those were his very words, were they not, Evelyn?” madam interposed, pausing to look at her daughter. “Yes, mamma, you have repeated them exactly as I remember them,” was the unfeeling reply. Salome felt as if the blood was turning to ice in her veins at this blighting statement. She had begun to be so happy, so secure in her husband’s love, before these people came into her home with their cold looks and unfeeling hearts, and even since his departure she had trusted him fully; but these terrible words burned themselves into her brain and stabbed her to the heart like a poisoned dagger. “He also said,” Madame Winthrop went on ruthlessly, “that the head physician told him he believed that you were not going to get well—that you ought to be removed to some pleasant home where you would be tenderly cared for, where you would feel no anxiety about yourself. My son believed that you had conceived a sudden passion for him—he said some word, look, or gesture that escaped you one day led him to believe that you loved him; and so—can’t you see?—everything goes to prove that he married you from pity and gratitude.” Salome’s head had gradually drooped during these garbled and shameless statements, and now she covered her burning face with her trembling hands to conceal the shame and agony that were crushing her at this last terrible charge. Oh, it was dreadful! Could it be possible that she had betrayed all her wild love for Dr. Winthrop before he asked her to be his wife? Had she, in her weakness, been so lost to all maidenly delicacy and modesty? She tried to think—to remember when and how; but the bitter humiliation of the moment confused her utterly, and she could recall nothing. It did not seem possible that Dr. Winthrop could be so devoid of respect and consideration as to speak of these things to another, and yet, how otherwise would his mother have known of them?