Kitabı oku: «Tom Gerrard», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XIII

Two days had passed, and Gerrard was still at Kaburie, though Kate and her father had left the previous day; they were, however, to return, bringing with them three or four stockmen to assist Knowles and Gerrard to muster the cattle, for he had decided to buy the station and leave Knowles there as his manager. Although there were but four thousand head of cattle on the run, they were widely separated in small mobs of a few hundreds each—some high up in the ranges, and some haunting the low-lying littoral, and frequenting the flat marshy land about the mouths of the numerous creeks debouching into the sea, where they eagerly ate the lush, saline grasses and creepers that lined the coast above high-water mark—and to “round up” all these scattered mobs on their various camps, and count every beast, meant very hard work. Then too, Gerrard intended to have a general branding at the same time, and he felt a thrill of pleasure in his veins, when Kate had said to her father: “Father, why cannot we help, too? You can safely leave the battery and claim to Sam Young for a few days. And as you and I know the country so well, I am sure we should be of some use to Mr Gerrard.”

Douglas Fraser had never said “No” in his life to any request of Kate’s since she was fifteen, and he smiled assent. And then in addition to that he had taken such a strong liking to Gerrard that it gave him pleasure to afford him all the assistance in his power.

“All right, Gerrard!” (men in the Australian bush do not “Mister” each other after a few hour’s acquaintance) “we shall be here. And I’ll send over to Boorala for three or four good men to help in the mustering.”

So Kate and her father had ridden away and left Gerrard and Knowles to themselves for a few days; and Gerrard and the dapper little overseer planned all sorts of improvements that were to be effected in the way of making Kaburie a crack breeding station.

As father and daughter rode side by side along the track back to their home, through the darkening shadows of the coming night, they talked about Forde and Aulain, Fraser resting his big brown hand on her knee, and looking wistfully into her face.

“And you see, my child, that I well know that there will come a time when you and I must part Some man–”

“Never, father, never! I liked Mr Forde very much, but not well enough to marry him, and part from you. And I kissed him, dad, when we said good-bye. Do you mind much? I couldn’t help it. I felt that I must kiss him.” (Then tears.) “I thought I had better tell you, for I feel so horribly ashamed of myself.”

“There is nothing for you to be ashamed of, child,” said her father tenderly; “Forde is a man, and, as I told you, he would take your refusal like a white man and a gentleman.”

“He did. And I could not help crying over it.”

For some minutes they rode on in silence, then Fraser said:

“When is Aulain coming?”

“As soon as he is able to sit a horse, he said,” and then her face flushed. “I wish he would not come, father, and yet I do not like the idea of writing to him and telling him so—especially when he is ill.”

Fraser nodded. “I understand. Still I think it would be the better course to take. I had imagined, however, Kate, that you thought more of Aulain than you cared to admit, even to me.”

“So I did; and so I do now, but I would never marry him, father, no matter how much I cared for him.”

Her father looked at her inquiringly.

“I think I am afraid of him, dad, sometimes. He is so dreadfully jealous, and he has no right whatever to be jealous of me, for we were never engaged. And then there is another thing that is an absolute bar to my marrying him, though I fear I am too much of a coward to tell him so; he is a Roman Catholic. And whenever I think of that I remember the awful tragedy of the Wallington family.”

“I think you are quite right, Kate,” said the mine-owner gravely. “Frankly, whilst I think Aulain is a fine fellow, and would make you a good husband, I must confess that the thought of your marrying a Roman Catholic has often filled me with uneasiness.”

“Don’t be afraid, dad,” she said decisively. “In the first place, I am not going to marry anyone, and shall grow into a pretty old maid; in the second, if I was dying of love, nothing in the world would induce me to marry a Roman Catholic. Whenever I think of poor Mr Wallington as we saw him lying on the grass with the bullet hole through his forehead, I shudder. I loathe the very name of Mrs Wallington, and consider her and Father Corregio the actual murderers of that good old man.”

She spoke of an incident that had occurred when she was sixteen. Wallington, a wealthy Brisbane solicitor, had gone to England on a six months’ visit When he returned, he found that his wife and only daughter, a girl of five and twenty, had fallen under the influence of a Father Corregio, and had entered the Roman Catholic Church, and his long and happy married life was at an end. A week later he shot himself in his garden.

“I am afraid that poor Aulain will cut up pretty roughly over this, Kate,” said her father presently.

“I can’t help it, father. And I think, after all, I had better write to him to-morrow. I really do not want him to come to the Gully.”

And she did write, and Aulain’s face was not pleasant to see as he read her letter.

“By ______! if it is the parson fellow, I’ll shoot him like a rat,” he said, and then he cursed the fever that kept him away from Kate.

He went over to the Clarion office and saw Lacey, who was quick to perceive that something had occurred to upset the dark-faced sub-Inspector.

“How are you, Aulain? Any ‘shakes’ to-day?” he asked, referring to the recurring attacks of ague from which Aulain suffered.

“Oh! just the usual thing,” replied his visitor irritably, as he sat down on a cane lounge, and viciously tugged at his moustache. “I thought I would come over and worry you with my company for a while, and get you to come across to the Queen’s and share a bottle of fizz with me. They have some ice there I hear—came up by the Sydney steamer last night.”

Lacey’s eyes twinkled, “I’m with you, my boy. I’ve just finished writing a particularly venomous leader upon mine adversary the Planters’ Friend, and a nice cool drink, such as you suggest, on a roasting day like this, will tend to assuage the journalistic rage against my vile and hated contemporary.”

Arriving at the Queen’s Hotel the two men went upstairs and sat down on comfortable cane lounges on the verandah, and in a few minutes the smiling Milly appeared with a large bottle of champagne, and a big lump of the treasured ice, carefully wrapped up in a piece of blanketing. As Lacey attended to the ice, Aulain began to cut the cork string.

“Oh! by the way, Lacey,” he said carelessly, “I saw in the Clarion yesterday that Forde, the sky pilot, is leaving the Church. Are you ready with the glasses.”

“I am. Faith, doesn’t it look lovely. Steady, me boy, these long sleever glasses hold a pint. Here’s long life to ye, Aulain. Heavens! but it is good,” and he sighed contentedly as he set down his glass again.

“Ye were asking about Forde?” he said as he wiped his red, perspiring face. “Yes, he is giving up parsonifying. I had a letter from him by the mailman yesterday from Fraser’s Gully. He was staying there for the night with our friend Gerrard.”

Aulain’s black brows knit, and his hand clenched under the table, as Lacey went on,

“His mother has died, and left him some money. And very glad it is I am to hear it, for a finer man I don’t know.”

“Much?”

“He didn’t say; but I know that his mother was pretty well off. He merely wrote me asking me to mention in the Clarion that he was leaving the Church, and was going South. Ye see, he has a power of friends all over the country, and he just asked me to write a bit of a paragraph saying he was going away, and regretted that he could not come to Port Denison to preach next Sunday fortnight.”

Aulain re-filled Lacey’s and his own glass, “Lucky fellow! When is he leaving Fraser’s place?”

“He was leaving that morning for Boorala, and Fraser and his daughter and Gerrard were going with him as far as the turn-off. By a bit of good-luck, Gerrard—who also sent me a few lines—met Forde and Miss Fraser on his way to the Gully. Here is his note,” and he took a letter from his pocket and handed it to Aulain, who read:

“Fraser’s Gully.

“Dear Lacey,—As the Boorala mailman is calling here this morning, I send you a line. I had the good fortune to come across Miss Fraser and Mr Forde at Cape Conway, and we all came on to her father’s place together. I like Fraser. He’s a fine old cock. The parson, too, is a good sort As for Miss Kate Fraser, she is a modernised Hotspur’s Kate—a delightfully frank and charming girl. I envy the lucky man who wins her. I hope the boy has not got into any mischief, and is giving you no trouble. Give Aulain my regards, and tell him I delivered his letter sooner than I anticipated. I leave for Kaburie this morning, and am to have the pleasure of being accompanied by Fraser and his daughter. Tell Jim that if he gets into any mischief whilst I am away, I’ll make it hot for him.—Sincerely yours,

“Tom Gerrard.”

Aulain handed the letter back to Lacey. He was outwardly calm, but his heart was surging with passion. What business had that d–d parson fellow and Kate to be together at Cape Conway, fifteen miles away from her home? And then his receptive brain conjured up the blackest suspicions. Forde had come into money, and Kate had written to him saying that she could not marry him, “because she would never marry and leave her father.” He set his teeth.

“I think we could do another bottle, Aulain,” said Lacey presently.

“Right, old man!” replied the sub-Inspector mechanically, and then Lacey noticed that his bronzed face had become pallid.

“‘Shakes’ coming on?” he asked, sympathetically.

“Just a bit; but the fizz is doing me good.”

CHAPTER XIV

Mustering on Kaburie was almost over, much to the satisfaction of every one taking part in it, for the weather had been unpleasantly hot even for North Queensland, and heavy tropical thunderstorms had added to the difficulty of the work by the creeks coming down in flood. All the cattle running in the mountain gullies and on the spurs, had been brought in, the calves and “clean-skins” branded, and now there remained only those which roamed about the coast lands.

Early one morning Gerrard, Fraser, and Kate, with three stockmen, were camped near the mouth of a wide, but shallow creek, whose yellow, muddied waters were rushing swiftly to the sea. The party had arrived there the previous evening, and now, breakfast over, were ready to start to muster the cattle in the vicinity. Heavy rain had fallen during the night, but Kate’s little tent, with its covering fly had kept her dry, and the rest of the party had slept under a rough, but efficient shelter of broad strips of ti-tree bark spread upon a quickly-extemporised frame of thin saplings.

Just as they started the sky cleared and the blue dome above was unflecked by a single cloud as they rode in single file along a cattle track leading to the beach, which they reached in half an hour.

“What a glorious sight!” said Gerrard, as he drew rein and pointed to the blue Pacific, shimmering and sparkling under the rays of the morning sun. “Look, there is a brig-rigged steamer quite close in—evidently she must be calling in at Port Denison, or would not be so near the land.”

“Yes,” said Kate, “that is one of the new China mail boats, the Ching-tu. How beautiful she is—for a steamer, with those sloping masts, with the yards across, and the curved shapely bow like a sailing ship. Oh! I do so wish I were on board. I love ships and the If I were a man I should be a sailor.”

“Would you?” said Gerrard, as he looked at the animated, beautiful face. “I, too, am fond of the sea, though it robbed me of father, mother, and a brother-in-law, my twin sister’s husband. She died of a broken heart soon after.”

Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, how dreadful!” and then as they rode on Gerrard told her the story of the Cassowary.

“What a sweet child your little niece Mary must be,” she said, when he had finished, “and I am sure, too, that your protégé, Jim Coll, must be a perfect little man. I wish I could see him.”

“I can safely promise you that, now that I have bought Kaburie, and I feel pretty sure that you will gain his affections very quickly; especially if you will let him ride that bucking filly. I daresay that I shall be back here within twelve months, and bring Master Jim with me.”

“This is where we separate, boss,” said a stockman named Trouton, “if you, Mr and Miss Fraser and me take the right bank of this creek, my two mates will work down on the other bank, and we’ll get the cattle on both sides at the same time, and drive ‘em all on to Wattle Camp, which is between this creek and the next to the south of us.” Then turning to the other stockmen, he warned them to be careful of alligators.

“You chaps must keep your eyes skinned if you have to swim any bits of backwater, now the creeks are up. Don’t cross anywheres unless you have some cattle to send in fust, and keep clost up to their tails if yous can’t get in among ‘em. ‘Gaters like man and horse meat next best to calf.”

The two men nodded, and riding down the bank, crossed the creek and quickly disappeared in the scrub on the other side; then Gerrard’s party turned towards the coast, Trouton leading the way with the packhorses along a well-defined cattle-track. A quarter of an hour later they came across a small mob of cows and calves, which as the stockwhips cracked, trotted off in front, to be joined by several more, and in a short time the mob had increased to five hundred head, and Trouton and Gerrard decided to drive them across the creek to join those which were being rounded up by the two stockmen on the left hand bank. In reply to a question by Gerrard, Trouton said that the crossing was a good one even when the creek was as high as it was then, on account of its width—about two hundred yards from bank to bank.

“It is a hard, sandy bottom, boss, and we shall only have about forty yards of swimming to do. If we rush ‘em they’ll get over in no time.”

“Very well. But we will cut out all the cows with calves too young to swim.”

This did not take long, and some thirty or forty cows with calves were separated from the mob, and driven some distance back into the scrub by Fraser. Then with the usual yelling and cracking of whips the main mob was rushed down the bank into the water, a wide-horned, stately bullock, plunging into the yellow stream, and taking the lead Close behind the cattle followed the three men and Kate, the latter and Gerrard keeping on the “lee” side of the mob so as to prevent them spreading out and getting too far down-stream, where there was danger from a number of snags of ti-trees, which showed above water in the middle of the creek. The cattle, however, kept well together, and when the deep part was reached, swam safely across, despite the rather strong current.

“They went over splendidly, didn’t they?” cried Fraser to Gerrard, as he gave his horse a loose rein and leant forward to let the animal swim easily. “We are lucky to get them over so easily, and–”

His words were interrupted by a cry of terror from Kate, as the colt she was riding gave an agonised snort of terror, and began pawing the water with its fore-feet.

“Help me, father! Mr Gerrard! Oh, it is an alligator!” and as she spoke she was nearly unseated. “It has Cato by the off hind leg.”

Gerrard, only ten yards away from her, turned his horse’s head, and shouted to her to throw herself off, and then, with a deadly terror in his heart, saw her shaken off; and disappear in the surging stream, but in a few seconds she rose to the surface, panting and choking, but swimming bravely, though she was unable to see. Gerrard, now beside her, leant over, placed his left arm round her waist, and held her tight.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, “I have you safe; take a good grip of my horse’s mane and hold on; he will take you across in a few minutes,” and as the girl obeyed, he slipped out of the saddle, so as to swim beside her. Then his bronzed face went white with horror as the black snout of an alligator thrust itself out of the water between the girl and himself, and the saurian tried to seize her by the shoulder. In an instant Gerrard had clutched the reptile by the throat with his right hand.

“Go on, go on; for God’s sake, do not mind me!” he cried to Kate; “I have the brute by its throat,” and then, as he and the hideous creature were struggling fiercely, Fraser came to his assistance, and emptied the five chambers of his heavy Colt’s pistol into its body, and Gerrard, whose face was cut open by a stroke of one of the reptile’s fore-paws, remembered nothing more till he found himself lying upon the bank with Fraser and the stockmen attending to him.

“Is Miss Fraser safe?” was his first question.

“Yes, thanks to God and to your bravery,” answered Fraser with deep emotion; “but don’t speak any more just now, there’s a good fellow. The brute has ripped the left side of your face open from the top of your head to the chin, and we are trying to put in some stitches.”

“All right,” was the cheerful, but faint response; “but tell me—is my eye gone?”

“No, boss,” said Trouton quickly, “your eye is all right, but the eyebrow is mauled pretty badly, and was hanging over it, but we’ve got it back again now, and tied it up in place. Here, boss, take a sup o’ this,” and he placed a brandy flask to Gerrard’s lips. The liquor stung his lacerated lips like fire, but it revived him.

“Where is Miss Fraser?” he then asked.

“Here, beside you, dear Mr Gerrard,” said the girl brokenly, as she pressed his hand, and turned her face away in blinding tears.

“Narrow squeak for both of us, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but please do not try to talk, dear Mr Gerrard.”

“Oh, I’m all right, and must gabble a bit, now I know that I haven’t lost an eye. You see, Fraser, the beast, although he was only a little fellow–”

“Eight feet he were, boss,” interrupted Trouton, “but a young ‘un, as you say.”

“Well, just after I collared him, he swung his head about and hit me such a tremendous smack on the side of my brain-box that it stunned me. But I didn’t let go, did I?”

“No,” replied Fraser, “you held on like grim death. I settled the brute by putting five bullets into it.”

“There was two ‘o ‘em, boss,” said Trouton, “the one as collared Miss Kate’s horse, and the one as you tackled.”

“Did Cato get away?” Gerrard asked quickly.

“Yes, yes, he got away,” said Kate hurriedly, trying to speak calmly, though the poor colt, which had managed to struggle to the bank with a lacerated and broken leg, was then lying dead with a bullet through its head. Trouton had put it out of its misery.

There was no more mustering that day, for Gerrard’s condition was so serious, though he tried to make light of it, that Fraser, leaving the cattle to the care of the two stockmen, first sent off Trouton to Boorala for a doctor, and then he, taking one of the pack-horses, made Gerrard mount his own.

“We’ll be at Kaburie as soon as the little German doctor is there,” he said, as he, Gerrard, and Kate started.

And when they reached Kaburie they found Doctor Krause, a quiet, spectacled little man, awaiting them with Knowles the overseer.

“Will he lose his eye, Krause?” asked Fraser, after the doctor had attended to Gerrard, and he with Kate met him in the dining-room.

“No, but his face is very much cut about, and the poor fellow may be disfigured for life.”

Kate turned away with a bursting heart, and went to her room.

CHAPTER XV

“Poor, dear, old Tommy boy!” said Westonley to his wife, as they sat at their breakfast table some weeks after the mishap to Gerrard. The mail had just arrived at Marumbah, and brought a letter from his brother-in-law, and one from Fraser, His eyes glistened as he laid them down upon the table, and looked at his wife, who, he could see, was also visibly affected, whilst little Mary sobbed unrestrainedly.

“I wish this Mr Fraser had telegraphed to us, Edward. I would have left Marumbah the same day, and gone to poor Tom to nurse him.”

“Would you, old girl?” and the big man rose from his seat and kissed her, his thick, heavy beard spreading out over her shoulders.

“Indeed, I would. And now it is no use my going, is it?”

“Not a bit, Lizzie. You hear what Fraser says—‘He is getting on splendidly, and the left eye is saved.’ Let me read it all over again; shall I?”

“Do,” and her pale, clear-cut features flushed; “it makes me feel as if I were there and saw the whole dreadful sight. Don’t cry any more, Mary dear. Uncle Tom is getting better.”

“If Jim had been with him, it wouldn’t have happened,” said the child, suppressing her sobs, and wiping her streaming eyes; “Jim would have been sure to have seen the alligator coming before any one else, and done something. I am quite sure that even if he met a bunyip he would not be afraid; but would fight it.”

“I’m dead certain of it, Mary,” said Westonley, as he put his big hand upon the child’s head, and then taking up Fraser’s letter, he again read it aloud. It described in simple language Gerrard’s desperate struggle with the alligator, then went on about his courage and fortitude under agonising pain, for the wounds caused by alligators’ claws invariably set up an intense and poisonous inflammation, and take a long time to heal, and concluded by saying, “as long as life lasts, I shall never forget that only for his heroic conduct I should now be a childless man, and my daughter have died a death too fearful to contemplate.”

Gerrard’s letter was in his usual laconic style.

“Dear Ted,—I have bought a little station here called Kaburie—good cattle country with about 2500 head on it. In getting a mob across a creek I was mauled by an alligator’ and if it had not been for my friend Fraser—in whose house I am now staying for a week or so—shooting the beast, it would have had me. It is nothing serious, so don’t worry over me—some deep cuts on my face, that is all, and Mr Fraser and his daughter (a charming girl) are coddling me up. Jim is with me. I left him with your old friend Lacey at Port Denison, but the young beggar wouldn’t stay when he heard that I had had an accident. He is making great running with pretty Miss Fraser. Give my love to Lizzie and Mary, and tell the latter that I trust her bear is now thoroughly convalescent Jim will write to Mary by next mail. He went out early this morning fishing with Miss F–, and did not know that the mailman was calling to-day.—Yours ever, Tom.”

Mary’s face brightened at the prospect of a letter from her dearly-beloved Jim, and Mrs Westonley smiled. Ever since Gerrard’s visit to Marumbah Downs, her once icy and austere manner to the child had, bit by bit, relaxed, until at last she had thawed altogether, and had been amply repaid by such a warm response of affection that she now made a companion of the little one, and found herself a much happier woman now that the sweet sunlight of childish love had penetrated and melted her former frigid reserve. Westonley had noted the change with unalloyed delight, but, like a wise man, had pretended not to notice; but one day, soon after Gerrard’s letter had arrived, he could not suppress himself. He had been away on a business visit to his squatter neighbour Brooke, to whom he had sold his cattle station in Central Queensland at a very satisfactory figure, and as he rode up to the slip-rails of the home-paddock, he saw the one time “incubus” coming flying towards him, her sun-tanned face wreathed in smiles.

“Oh, Uncle Ted, Uncle Ted!” she panted, as she took down the slip-rails, and let Westonley pass through, “just fancy, Uncle Ted!”—and as she spoke, she lifted the slip-rails in place again and turned to him with a beaming face, out of breath, and so wildly excited that she could scarcely speak.

“What is the matter, young ‘un?” and the big man bent down and swooped her up into the saddle in front of him.

“Oh, Uncle Ted, this is the very, very first time in my life that I was glad you were away!”

“How’s that?”

“Aunt Lizzie let me sleep with her last NIGHT.”

A great joy came into Westonley’s heart. “Did she? Really and truly?”

“Really and truly! And oh, Uncle Ted, it was lovely! We talked and talked and talked for such a long time, and she told me such a lot of things about the school she was at in England, and about the girls there—some were very nice, but there were some horrid ones. Oh, she told me heaps of things. It was lovely, and we had Bunny in the room, too”—here she paused to catch her breath—“he tried to get in through the mosquito curtains, and got all tangled up, and tore a most enormous hole in them, and Aunt Lizzie only laughed, and said it didn’t matter!”

“You must have had a bully time.”

“Splendid! And Aunt Lizzie and I are going to the beach together one day next week to get pippies, and she says she won’t mind if she gets sopping wet right up to her face.”

When they reached the house they found Mrs Westonley awaiting them on the verandah, and when her husband put his arms around her and kissed her repeatedly, she blushed like a young girl. And as the days went on he saw with delight that she had at last taken the child to her heart.

Breakfast was over, and Westonley in his study was talking to his head stockman when he saw Brooke riding up.

“Lizzie,” he called to his wife, “here is Brooke. I expect he will have some breakfast, so tell Mrs Patton.”

Brooke, a tall, powerfully-built man, and usually as boisterous as a school-boy in his manner, seemed very quiet as he dismounted, shook hands with Westonley and his wife, and patted Mary’s head.

“Just in time for breakfast, Mr Brooke.”

“No, thank you, Mrs Westonley. I had mine at five o’clock—I made an early start, as I wanted to get here as soon as possible, thinking that very likely Westonley might be going out on the run somewhere, and that I might miss him. I want to have a talk with you, old man.”

Mrs Westonley and Mary at once left the room, both wondering what was the matter with Brooke—he looked so worried and depressed.

“Westonley, old fellow,” he said, as he sat down, “give me a big brandy and soda. I’ve ridden hard all the way from my place.” Then he looked at the letters and newspapers still lying upon the breakfast table. The latter, he saw, were unopened. Drinking off the brandy and soda, he said:

“You haven’t opened your Argus yet, I see?”

“No, we had some bad news about Tom Gerrard—he’s been mauled by an alligator, and we haven’t bothered about newspapers this morning.”

“Not seriously hurt, I trust?” anxiously asked the squatter, who had a sincere regard for Gerrard.

“No, I am glad to say. I’ll show you his letter presently. But what is the matter, Brooke? You look worried.”

“I am—most infernally worried. Tell me, old man, what did you do with that cheque of mine for eight thousand?” (The cheque to which he alluded was the price of the station in Central Queensland which he had bought from Westonley a few weeks previously.)

“Paid it into my bank,” replied Westonley, instantly surmising that Brooke’s financial affairs had gone wrong.

“Dacre’s?”

“Yes.”

“Westonley, old chap, I have bad news for you. I got a telegram from Melbourne last night—Dacre’s Bank has smashed, and smashed badly—hopelessly, in fact.”

Westonley’s florid face paled.

“Smashed!”

“Utterly smashed. Will it hit you hard?”

“Break me! I had thirty thousand pounds on fixed deposit, a current account of about fifteen thousand—including the eight thousand you paid me, and every penny of my wife’s money, little Mary’s, and Jim’s were in Dacre’s,” and, man as he was, his voice trembled.

“It won’t break you—by heavens, it shall not break you, Westonley! I bought Comet Vale from you for my boys, but I’ll give it back to you for three—for five—years to help you to pull up.”

“Thanks, Brooke,” and the big man grasped his friend’s hand mechanically. “This has dazed me a bit. Come outside, and well talk it over.”

He rose unsteadily, placing his hand on the edge of the table, and then fell forward upon his face, and lay still—his big, generous heart had ceased to beat.

When Brooke rode away late that night on his way home thinking of his dead friend, he reproached himself for so often having spoken of Elizabeth Westonley as “a pretty automaton, with as much heart in her as a doll.” For her silent grief had showed him that she had loved her husband.