“Positively, Cousin Morris,” and Helen’s eye flashed as she said it, “he acted all the while he was in the church as if he were doing something of which he was ashamed; and then did you notice how impatient he seemed when the neighbors were shaking hands with Katy at the depot and bidding her good-by?  He looked as if he thought they had no right to touch her, she was so much their superior, just because she had married him, and he even hurried her away before Aunt Betsy had time to kiss her.  And yet the people think it such a splendid match for Katy, because he is so rich and generous.  Gave the clergyman fifty dollars and the sexton five, so I heard; but that does not help him with me.  I know it’s wicked, Morris, as well as you, but somehow I find myself taking real comfort in hating Wilford Cameron.”

“That is wrong, Helen, all wrong,” and Morris tried to reason with her; but his arguments this time were not very strong, and he finally said to her, inadvertently:  “If I can forgive Wilford Cameron for marrying our Katy, you surely ought to do so, for he has hurt me the most.”

“You, Morris! you, you!” Helen kept repeating, standing back still further and further front him, while strange, overwhelming thoughts passed like lightning through her mind as she marked the pallid face, where was written since the morning more than one line of suffering, and saw in the brown eyes a look such as they were not wont to wear.  “Morris, tell me—­tell me truly—­did you love my Sister Katy?” and with an impetuous rush Helen knelt beside him, as, laying his head upon the table he answered: 

“Yes, Helen.  God forgive me if it were wrong.  I did love your Sister Katy, and love her yet, and that is the hardest to bear.”

All the tender, pitying woman was roused in Helen, and like a sister she smoothed the locks of damp, dark hair, keeping a perfect silence as the strong man, no longer able to bear up, wept like a very child.  For a time Helen felt as if bereft of reason, while earth and sky seemed blended in one wild chaos as she thought:  “Oh, why couldn’t it have been?  Why didn’t you tell her in time?” and at last she said to him; “If Katy had known it!  Oh, Morris, why didn’t you tell her?  She never guessed it, never!  If she had—­if she had,” Helen’s breath came chokingly:  “I am very sure—­yes, I know it might have been!”

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these—­it might have been.”

Morris involuntarily thought of these lines, but they only mocked his sorrow as he answered Helen:  “I doubt if you are right; I hope you are not; hope that it might not have been, as it is not now.  Katy loved me as her brother, nothing more, I am confident.  Had she waited till she was older, God only knows what might have been, but now she is gone and our Father will help me to bear, will help us both, if we ask him, as we must.”

And then as only he could do, Morris talked with Helen until she felt her hardness toward Wilford giving way, while she wondered how Morris could speak thus kindly of one who was his rival.