During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her
recreant ruffian of a husband--or, for that matter, of any other phase of
her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for
a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and
maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually
wore away. But we had both been warned by it--if indeed I ought to speak
of her as possibly needing such a warning--and by tacit consent the whole
subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed
the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have
added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for
revenge should come.

That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl,
I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the
dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with
no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For
the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the
neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting
that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes
of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources.

"You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked
Enoch.

"No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver
it into her hands."

"And what was his mood when he gave it to you?"