San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-11-15

DeleVeu GnaL lie ndu poisoned nlnSelI 10
any serious extent, you may well accuse
me of hardness and guilty neglect but God
knows, when | said that / had no thought
of meaning more than that he had made
himself i'll with the fumes from some of the
drugs that l knew he had been heating over
his furnace in the afternoon.
u meant no more than this-I never
dreamt of mOre-I never for an instant inn
agined that he was in any danger. | should
have been quicker to take alarm, perhaps,
II had loved him. That, l know, is posi-
ble,-although still from the bottom of my
heart l can say that, in all external things,
did try from first to last, to the utmost of
my power, to do my duty toward him.
II never neglected him; never let him
want what care or attention could give
him. You see, this was the only thing that
lcould do for him,-and always felt, even
when L cared for him least, that | owed
some reparation to him for ever having be-
come his wife.
you may remember that no suspicion of
his having taken poison occurred to the first
doctor who saw him, on the morning after
he had been taken i'll. 1t neither occurred
to him, nor did / suggest it to him. That
again was another proof of my cunning,
they said.
''They accused me of speaking of poison
before Ignorant people who would spread
the suspicion from one to another, without
any power of proving it true or false; tut
picions aroused, would be sure to detect the
truth, l was careful to keep my mouth shut
they said.
Il was not careful! The thing that had
thought had been mere vague suppOsition,
hastily taken up: was It in any way singu-
lar that when DR.. Wilson at once gave
name to his patients ailment, and assigned
natural cause for IL that seemed wholly
to satisfy himself-was it singular that
should be silent over my crude momentary
notion?
II repeated it again afterward, indeed,
but when did so repeated it to DR.. Will
son himself. And-do you remember?-it
was he almost alone at the trial who stood
up for me. he said-in opposition to the
other doctors, lin spite of the arsenic found
in the body-that he believed the death was
due to natural causes.
II was with him almost night and day
while he was i'll; and they made even this
one of their charges against me, because
they said IL was unnatural in woman
whose indifference to him was no secret to
devote herself so unremittingly to him then
But do you think it was unnatural9
| Could / have done anything else but devote
| myself to him, though he had been less to
me even than he was, during these days
when all the self-repr0ach that | had ever
felt for having married him was being
doubled and trebled at the prospect of his
death.
into the earth by dragging to light every
miserable petty detail that they could gath
er about our loveleSs marriage? Sometimes,
in the midst of great misfortune, il seems
to me as if a small thing, that ought, per-
haps, compared with all the rest, to be of
almost no account at all, comes like the last
unbearable drop of bitterness that makes
the heart nearly burst.
Il had endured all the rest, all the hor-
rible suspicious and accusations, because
they were false, and because, / suppose,
Indignation helped me there; but when
spring day; and l think that when she
spoke so, and when whether it were on
this day or anOtherl she first fully and
clearly thought so, it was then that she
gained her soul, and stepped out of
| girlhood into womanhOod. A year ago
such words would never have passed
her lips,-such thought would never
for moment have crossed her mind.
But George Gilbert's hand had led her
out of the border land in which she had
been sOjourning peacefully twelve
months ago,-that level land of placid
twilight. out of which some people
never find their way at all, nor wish to
find it,-and she had turned her back
upon it now forever in this world.
She had learnt more, too, than how
to love him, for she had learnt how to
revere him also. She who had looked
up to few people hitherto, except oc-
casionally to her uncle who had hard
ly known what humility meant, who
had lived her bright careless years full
of self-confdence and self-esteem, had
found in George Gilbert something that
awoke feelings in her as new as if she
had been born into another life. do
not say that he deserved it-probably
he did not-but she made hero of him,
and set him on pedestal, and did hon.
age to him. She came to love the gravity
that had seemed dull and oppressive to
her Once,-the earnest talk that had
wearied and shamed her when she knew
him first,-the thoughtful face with its
quiet obServant eyes. Those eyes used
to watch her, and she came to have no
pleasure like the pleasure of knowing
that they sought and followed her; to
raise her own and find them looking at
her, to turn to them when she wanted
any question answered, any difficulty
solved, any advice given, with the al
most certain feeling that she should not
ask for these or any other things in vain
became to her, of all sweet things, the
first and sweetest.
1t was on day in March that the
elimination of all this came at last.
On this very morning it was raining,
as she stood by one of the cottage par
lOr windows, looking out at the great
drops pattering down upon the gravel
walks, and something of the cheerlesS-
ness of the day seemed to pass into the
girls heart. She was thinking to her
self-"I have been so happy, and now
few weeks more will bring it all to an
end,-and then" She had thought
"He loves me less than love him. He
will wait, and go away, and never say a
word to me. He will think it RIGHT. not