Mrs. Dinsmore had been awed and frightened into something slightly akin to terror and remorse on account of her excessive harshness, but now shook it off.
"Really she takes her dismissal very hard," she remarked to Mildred as the latter was leaving the dinner table. "I had no idea she was so much attached to Roselands."
"I do not think it could be that alone, aunt," Mildred returned in surprise and disgust.
"Her relative's disgrace; the poverty and distress to herself and a mother and sister dependent on her, consequent on being thrown out of employment."
Then with a sudden recollection of that paper with its marked paragraph, Mildred hastened from the room and went in search of it.
The patient had fallen asleep, Rachel watching at her side.
A glance showed Mildred the paper folded and laid upon the table. She opened it cautiously, found the article she sought and read it.
"A case of lynching occurred in one of the southern counties of Texas, about two weeks ago. A man named Joseph White, said to be from one of the Northern States, suspected of horse stealing, was taken by a posse of some forty armed men, carried into the woods and hung. He was given ten minutes to prepare for death; died bravely, protesting his innocence to the last; but of course nobody believed him, as the proof against him was strong."
Sick and faint with horror, Mildred laid down the paper and dropped, shuddering, into a chair. Oh, this was worse than all! If he was that poor woman's husband, and she loved him, no wonder news so dreadful, and coming at such a time as this, should bring her down to the very gates of death.
The girlish heart was filled with a great compassion for the poor stricken creature, a great longing to comfort her in her grief and desolation.
"She will not live, she cannot," she whispered to herself; "I should not wish to were I in her place; for oh, it is so horrible, so horrible! How can men be such savages as to take human life to atone for the loss of an animal! and that perhaps the life of an innocent man?"
"I should be loath to assume your responsibility in this matter," remarked Mr. Dinsmore to his wife, as Mildred left them lingering over their dessert.
"Why?" she demanded, bridling; "did _I_ cause the ruin of her brother or the poverty of the family?"