He hitched Jinny, and went in to find Philippa's father, and to him he freed his mind. The two men sat on the porch looking down over the tops of the lilac-bushes into the garden, where they could just see the heads of the two young, unhappy people.
"It's nonsense, you know," said William King, "that Philly doesn't take that boy. He's head over heels in love with her."
"She is not attached to him in any such manner," Henry Roberts said;
"I wonder a little at it, myself. He is a good youth."
The doctor looked at him wonderingly; i t occurred to him that if he had a daughter he would understand her better than Philly's father understood her. "I think the child cares for him," h e said; then, hesitatingly, he referred to John Fenn's sickness. "I suppose you know about it?" he said.
Philly's father bent his head; he knew, he thought, only too well; no divine revelation in a disordered digestion!
"Don't you think," William King said, smiling, "you might try to make her feel that she is wrong not to accept him, now that the charm has worked, so to speak?"
"The charm?" the old man repeated, vaguely.
"I thought you understood," the doctor said, frowning; then, after a minute's hesitation, he told him the facts.
Henry Roberts stared at him, shocked and silent; his girl, his Philippa, to have done such a thing! "So great a sin--my little Philly!" he said, faintly.
He was pale with distress.
"My dear sir," Dr. King protested, impatiently, "don't talk about SIN i n connection with that child. I wish I'd held my tongue!"
Henry Roberts was silent. Philippa's share in John Fenn's mysterious illness removed it still further from that revelation, waited for during all these years with such passionate patience.
He paid no attention to William King's reassurances; and his silence was so silencing that by and by the doctor stopped talking and looked down into the garden again. He observed that those two heads had not drawn any nearer together. It was not John Fenn's fault....
"There can be no good reason," he was saying to Philippa. "If it is a bad reason, I will overcome it! Tell me why?"
She put her hand up to her lips and trembled.
"Come," he said; "it is my due, Philippa. I WILL know!"
Philippa shook her head. He took her other hand and stroked it, as one might stroke a child's hand to comfort and encourage it.
"You must tell me, beloved," he said.
Philippa looked at him with scared eyes; then, suddenly pulling her hands from his and turning away, she covered her face and burst into uncontrollable sobbing. He, confounded and frightened, followed her and tried to soothe her.
"Never mind, Philly, never mind! i f you don't want to tell me--"
"I do want to tell you. I will tell you! You will despise me. But I will tell you. I DID A WICKED DEED. It was this very plant-here, where we stand, monk's-hood! It was poison. I didn't know--oh, I didn't know. The book said monk's-hood--it was a mistake.
But I did a wicked deed. I tried to kill you--"
She swayed as she spoke, and then seemed to sink down and down, until she lay, a forlorn little heap, at his feet. For one dreadful moment he thought she had lost her senses. He tried to lift her, saying, with agitation:
"Philly! We will not speak of it--"
"I murdered you," she whispered.
"I put the charm into your tea, to make you... love me. You didn't die.
But it was murder. I meant--I meant no harm--"
He understood. He lifted her up and held her in his arms. Up on the porch William King saw that the two heads were close together!
"Why!" the young man said. "Why-- b ut Philly! You loved me!"
"What difference does that make?" s he said, heavily.
