“Sit down, Sylvia,” said Henry, soothingly, but he, too, looked both angry and ashamed.

“You had better keep still where you are to-night,” said Meeks.  “Miss Babcock is doing all that anybody can.  There isn’t much to be done, Dr. Wallace says.  To-morrow you can go over there and sit with her, and let Miss Babcock take a nap.”  Meeks rose as he spoke.  “I must be going,” he said.  “I needn’t charge you again not to let anybody know what I’ve told you before the will is read.  It is irregular, but I thought I’d cheer up Henry here a bit.”

“No, we won’t speak of it,” declared the husband and wife, almost in unison.

After Meeks had gone they looked at each other.  Both looked disagreeable to the other.  Both felt an unworthy suspicion of the other.

“I hope she will get well,” Sylvia said, defiantly.  “Maybe she will.  This is her first shock.”

“God knows I hope she will,” returned Henry, with equal defiance.

Each of the two was perfectly good and ungrasping, but each accused themselves and each other unjustly because of the possibilities of wrong feeling which they realized.  Sylvia did not understand how, in the face of such prosperity, she could wish Abrahama to get well, and she did not understand how her husband could, and Henry’s mental attitude was the same.

Sylvia sat down and took some mending.  Henry seated himself opposite, and stared at her with gloomy eyes, which yet held latent sparks of joy.  “I wish Meeks hadn’t told us,” he said, angrily.

“So do I,” said Sylvia.  “I keep telling myself I don’t want that poor old woman to die, and I keep telling myself that you don’t; but I’m dreadful suspicious of us both.  It means so much.”

“Just the way I feel,” said Henry.  “I wish he’d kept his news to himself.  It wasn’t legal, anyhow.”

“You don’t suppose it will make the will not stand!” cried Sylvia, with involuntary eagerness.  Then she quailed before her husband’s stern gaze.  “Of course I know it won’t make any difference,” she said, feebly, and drew her darning-needle through the sock she was mending.

Henry took up a copy of the East Westland Gazette.  The first thing he saw was the list of deaths, and he seemed to see, quite plainly, Abrahama White’s among them, although she was still quick, and he loathed himself.  He turned the paper with a rattling jerk to an account of a crime in New York, and the difficulty the police had experienced in taking the guilty man in safety to the police station.  He read the account aloud.

“Seems to me the principal thing the New York police protect is the criminals,” he said, bitterly.  “If they would turn a little of their attention to protecting the helpless women and children, seems to me it would be more to the purpose.  They’re awful careful of the criminals.”