Do you know that
a woman who was rescued says that your husband saved her boy, a little
lad like Caldwell. Arthur knocked down the man that was trying to rob
him of his life-preserver. The Captain told her afterward who it was."
He was perfectly sincere in what he said. It was difficult for him to
think evil of the living; of the dead it was impossible.
After he had gone, Edith took Caldwell on her knee and told him the
story. It was the brightest ray of comfort in all that sad time to be
able thus to glorify his father in the eyes of her son. The incident
dwelt in her mind, and her loving fancy added to it a hundred details
and drew from it numberless deductions with which to enrich the memory
of her dead. It came in time to be the most prominent thing in her
remembrance of her husband. It was the fact which she could recall with
the most unmixed satisfaction, which needed no evasions, no mental
reservations, no warpings of belief, to appear wholly noble. In the
light of this deed, the impulse of a moment, Fenton stood in her memory
as a hero; and in viewing him thus, she was able to lose sight of
everything which she must forgive, of everything which she wished to
forget.
Edith was happily spared the harassing complications of financial
difficulty which it had seemed must inevitably result from the
condition in which her husband's affairs were left.
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