"We--we would be so happy if you could be with us,--that
is, more than you are." She was stammering, but not from
embarrassment. It was in the fear of saying something that might touch
his sensitive pride.
"I--I love your mother," he cried intensely. "She's the best woman
I've ever known--except my own mother. She's better than my aunts--
yes, she is! Better than all of them. I could die for her."
She clutched his arm tightly but said nothing. The words could not
break through the sobs that were in her throat. Neither spoke for a
matter of a hundred feet or more. Then he said to her, rather
drearily:
"Did you read what the papers said about the--the murder, and about
me?"
"No. Mother will not let me read the things about crime. But," she
said quickly, "she has told me all about it since you came."
"They made me out to be a vicious degenerate and an ingrate," he said.
"Oh, it was horrible,--the things they said about me. Just as if they
knew I was guilty. But, Christine, I am going to make them take it all
back. I'm going to make them apologize some day, see if I don't." The
fierce agony in his voice moved her greatly.
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