? ? ? ? She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare, and the set face; and softened no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if the face had been a picture.
? ? ? ? 'Miss Dartle,' said I, 'if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for this afflicted mother -'
? ? ? ? 'Who feels for me?' she sharply retorted. 'She has sown this. Let her moan for the harvest that she reaps today!'
? ? ? ? 'And if his faults -' I began.
? ? ? ? 'Faults!' she cried, bursting into passionate tears. 'Who dares malign him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!'
? ? ? ? 'No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer remembrance than I,' I replied. 'I meant to say, if you have no compassion for his mother; or if his faults - you have been bitter on them -'
? ? ? ? 'It's false,' she cried, tearing her black hair; 'I loved him!'
? ? ? ? '- if his faults cannot,' I went on, 'be banished from your remembrance, in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you have never seen before, and render it some help!'
? ? ? ? All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable. Motionless, rigid, staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time to time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no other sign of life.
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