Family Pride

"You will remember me, Katy," he said, "but you cannot mourn for me always, and some time in the future you will cease to be my widow, and, Katy, I am willing. I wanted to tell you this so that no thought of me should keep you from a life where you will be happier than I have made you."

Wholly bewildered, Katy made no reply, and Wilford was silent a few moments, in which he seemed partially asleep. Then rousing up, he said: "You wrote me once that Genevra was not dead. Did you mean it, Katy?"

Frightened and bewildered, Katy turned appealingly to her father-in-law, who answered for her; "She meant it--Genevra is not dead," while a blood-red flush stained Wilford's face, and his thin fingers beat the bedspread thoughtfully.

"I fancied once that she was here--that she was the nurse the boys praise so much. But that was a delusion," he said, and without a thought of the result, Katy asked, impetuously: "If she were here would you care to see her?"

There was a startled look on Wilford's face, and he grasped Katy's hand nervously, his frame trembling with a dread of the great shock which he felt impending over him.

"Is she here? Was the nurse Genevra?" he asked, then as his mind went back to the past, he answered his own question by asserting: "Marian Hazelton is Genevra."

They did not contradict him, nor did he ask to see her. With Katy there, he felt he had better not, but after a moment he continued: "It is all so strange; I do not comprehend how it can be. She has been kind to me. Tell her I thank her for it. I was unjust to her. I have much to answer for."

Between each word he uttered now there was a gasp for breath, and Father Cameron opened the window wide to admit the cool night air. But nothing had power to revive him. He was going very fast, Morris said, as he took his stand by the bedside and watched the approach of death. There were no convulsive struggles, only heavy breathings, which grew farther and farther apart, until at last Wilford drew Katy close to him, and winding his arm around her neck, whispered: "I am almost home, my darling, and all is well. Be kind to Genevra for my sake. I loved her once, but not as I love you."

He never spoke again, and a few minutes later Morris led Katy from the room, and then went out to give his orders for the embalming of the body.