d, inasmuch as he had added his burden to hers.

When a year later the national credit involved that of Prendergast's
firm, Madeline read financial articles in the newspapers with heavy
concern, surprising her family with views on 'sound money'; and when,
shortly afterward, his partners brought that unhappy young man before
the criminal courts for an irregular use of the firm's signature, which
further involved it beyond hope of extrication, there was no moment of
the day which did not find her, in spirit, beside him there.

The case dragged on through appeal, and the decision of the lower courts
was not reversed. The day this became known the fact also transpired
that poor Prendergast would never live to complete his ten years' term
of imprisonment. He went to prison with hardly more than one lung, and
in the most favourable physical condition to get rid of the other. Mrs.
Prendergast wept a little over the installation, and assured Frederick
that it was perfectly absurd; they were certain to get him out again;
people always got people out again in America. She took him grapes and
flowers once a week for about a month, and then she sailed for Europe.
She put it about that her stay was to be as brief as was consistent with
the transaction of certain necessary business in London; but she never
came back, and Madeline Anderson had taken her place, in so far as
the grapes and flowers were concerned, for many months, when the
announcement of his wife's death reached Prendergast in an English
paper published in Paris. About a year after that it began to be thought
singular how he picked up in health, and Madeline's mother and sister
occasionally romanced about the possibility of his recovering and
marrying her after all--they had an enormous opinion of the artistic
virtue of forgiveness--but it was not a contingency ever seriously
contemplated by Miss Anderson herself. Her affection, pricked on by
remorse, had long satisfied itself with the duties of her ministry. If
she would not leave him until he died, it was because there was no one
but herself to brighten the long day in the prison hospital for him,
because she had thrown him into the arms of the woman who had deserted
him, because he represented in her fancy her life's only budding towards
the sun. Her patience lasted through six years, which was four years
longer than any doctor had given Frederick Prendergast to live; but when
one last morning she found an empty bed,