“Roger, Roger,” cried Mildred, “where are you going?  What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know—­I must have air or my heart will break; I’ll go mad.  She’s just been murdered, murdered,” and he rushed out.

After a little while he returned, and said, “There, Millie, I’m better.  I won’t give way again,” and he took her in his arms and let her cry away some of the pain in her heart.

Mrs. Jocelyn still lay upon the sofa, white as marble, and with dry, dilated eyes.  She was far beyond tears.

On the day following Belle’s death the Hon.------sat down to
a sumptuous dinner in one of the most fashionable of the Saratoga
hotels.  A costly bottle of wine added its ruddy hue to his florid
complexion.  The waiters were obsequious, the smiling nods of recognition
from other distinguished guests of the house were flattering, and
as the different courses were brought on, the man became the picture
of corpulent complacence.  His aspect might have changed could he
have looked upon the still form of the once frolicsome, beautiful
girl, who had been slain because he had failed so criminally in
fidelity to his oath of office.  It would not have been a pleasant
task for him to estimate how much of the money that should have
brought cleanliness and health among the tenements of the poor was
being worse than wasted on his own gross personality.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE FINAL CONSOLATIONS OF OPIUM

The glowing September sun had rarely revealed a sadder group than that which still watched beside poor Belle.  At last Roger looked at his watch and said: 

“I will now go and see Mr. Wentworth, and bring Mrs. Wheaton.”

“Very well, Roger,” Mildred replied, “we leave everything in your hands.”

“Millie, I can’t bear to have Belle placed in one of the crowded city cemeteries.  Would you not be willing to have her sleep in our tree-shadowed graveyard at Forestville?  We could keep flowers on her grave there as long as we lived.”

“Oh, Roger, how kind of you to think of that!  It would be such a comfort to us!”

“I will take her there myself on the evening boat,” he said decisively, and he hastened away feeling that he must act promptly, for his aching head and limbs led him to fear that Belle’s fever was already in his veins.  Mr. Wentworth overflowed with sympathy, and hastened to the afflicted family with nourishing delicacies.  Mrs. Wheaton soon followed, tearful and regretful.

“I didn’t know,” she said; “I’ve ’ad a sick child or I’d a been hover before.  Not ’earing from you I thought hall vas veil, and there’s the poor dear dead, an’ I might ’ave done so much for ’er.”

“No, Mrs. Wheaton, all was done that could be done in this poisoned air.  We feared you might catch the fever if you came, and we knew you would come.”

“Hindeed I vould, if you hall ’ad the small-pox.  Now I’m going to do heverything,” and she fretted at every effort of the exhausted watchers to help her.