But he had repented of the
wicked thought; he was glad he saved the pretty Petrea's child,
even though be should never see her face again. He knew not where
she was, that girlish wife, speaking her broken English for the
sake of her American husband, who was not always as kind to her as
he should have been. He had heard no tidings of her since that
fatal autumn. He had scarcely thought of her for months, but she
came back to him now, and it was Edith's voice which brought her.
"Poor blind man," he whispered aloud. "How like that was to
Petrea, when she said of my father, 'Poor, soft old man;'" and
then he wondered again who his visitor had been, and why she had
left him so abruptly.
It was a child, he knew, and he prized her gift the more for that,
for Richard Harrington was a dear lover of children and he kissed
the fair bouquet as he would not have kissed it had he known from
whom it came. Rising at last from his seat, he groped his way back
to the house, and ordering one of the costly vases in his room to
be filled with water, he placed the flowers therein, and thought
how carefully he would preserve them for the sake of his unknown
friend.
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