She did not know him, for if possible he suffered more than she did, though in a different way.

It hurt him to leave her there alone feeling as she did.
He hated to go without her, carrying only in his mind the memory of the white, rigid face which had not smiled on him for so long.

He wanted her to seem interested in something, for her cold apathy of manner puzzled and alarmed him; so remembering her aunt's letter on the morning of his departure, he spoke of it to her and said, "What shall I tell Mrs.Van Buren for you?
I shall probably see more or less of them." "Tell nothing; prisoners send no messages," was Ethelyn's reply; and in the dim gray of the morning the two faces looked a moment at each other with such thoughts and passions written upon them as were pitiable to behold.
But when Richard was fairly gone, when the tones of his voice bidding his family good-by had ceased, and Ethelyn sat leaning on her elbow and listening to the sound of the wheels which carried him away, such a feeling of utter desolation and loneliness swept over her that, burying her face in the pillows, she wept bitterer tears of remorse and regret than she had ever wept before.
That day was a long and dreary one to all the members of the prairie farmhouse.

It was lonely there the first day of Richard's absence, but now it was drearier than ever; and with a harsh, forbidding look upon her face, Mrs.Markham went about her work, leaving Ethelyn entirely alone.

She did not believe her daughter-in-law was any sicker than herself.