“She came with an invalid on her way to Richmond,” replied Harold.

“What invalid?”

He spoke almost in a whisper, but Moll overheard him, and answered fiercely: 

“One that is dying, Philip; and you know well enough who murdered her.  ’Twasn’t me you struck the hardest blow that night.  Do you see that scar?  That’s nothing; but you struck her to the heart.”

“What does she mean?” asked Harold, looking sternly into Philip’s disturbed eye.

“Heaven knows.  She’s mad,” he answered.  “Did she tell you nothing—­no absurd story?”

“Nothing.  She was sullen and uncommunicative, and half the time took no notice of our questions.”

“No wonder, poor thing!” said Philip.  “She’s mad.  However, I have some little power with her, and if you will leave us alone awhile, I will prevail upon her to go quietly back to Washington.”

Harold went up to the woman, who was leaning with folded arms against the wall, and spoke kindly to her.

“Should you want assistance, I will help you.  We shall be going in half an hour.  You must be ready to go with us, you know, for you can’t stay here, where there may be fighting presently.”

“Thank you,” she replied.  “Don’t mind me.  I can take care of myself.  You can leave us alone together.  I’m not afraid of him.”

Harold left the room, and busied himself about the preparations for departure.  Left alone with the woman he had wronged, Philip for some moments paced the room nervously and with clouded brow.  Finally, he stopped abruptly before Moll, who had been following his motions with her wild, unquiet eyes.

“Where have you sprung from now, and what do you want?”

“Do you see that scar?” she said again, but more fiercely than before.  “While that lasts, there’s no love ’twixt you and me, and it’ll last me till my death.”

“Then why do you trouble me.  If you don’t love me, why do you hang about me wherever I go?  We’ll be better friends away from each other than together.  Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“Ha! ha! we must be quits for that, you know,” she answered, rather wildly, and pointing to her forehead.  “Do you think I’m a poor whining fool like her, to get sick and die when you abuse me?  I’ll haunt you till I die, Philip; and after, too, if I can, to punish you for that.”

Philip fancied that he detected the gleam of insanity in her eye, and he was not wrong, for the terrible blow he had inflicted had injured her brain; and her mind, weakened by dissipation and the action of excitement upon her violent temperament, was tottering upon the verge of madness.