"I am not trifling, Flora; the same sun in whose light you once so loved to bask is now free to shine upon you with greater brilliancy than ever, and the one dark obstacle to your full enjoyment of it is removed. Flora, Mrs. Stanly, alias Mrs. Earnscliffe, is no more!"
How unspeakable is the delight of having the portals of hope re-opened when we believed them to be closed to us for ever in this world! Flora uttered a cry of joy, as she heard that they were no longer closed to her; but then she covered up her face in her hands and did not speak again for some moments. At last, however, she said, putting down her hands and showing a face as flushed as it had been pale before, "How do you know it? Mina, tell me quickly, are you certain that it is so?"
"You surely can't suppose that I would have said anything to you about it until I knew it beyond all doubt. A week ago I saw the death of a Mrs. Alfred Stanly in the paper, and thought to myself, what joy it would be for you if she were the late Mrs. Earnscliffe; so without a moment's delay I wrote to a cousin of mine in London, to find out who the Mrs. Alfred Stanly—wife to one of the higher officials in the Foreign Office—who was just dead, had been before her marriage to Stanly. My cousin is a very matter-of-fact sort of person, so without many comments upon my curiosity about Mrs. Stanly, he wrote back to me saying that he had made the most particular inquiries about the deceased lady, and that after a little trouble he had succeeded in learning all about her. The 'all' was that she had been a Miss Foster; then the wife of a Mr. Earnscliffe, from whom she was divorced; and finally she became Mrs. Stanly. I received the glad tidings this morning, and, of course, rushed off to tell them to you at once."
Flora's joy, however, was not unmixed with anxiety; and when she was alone, and able to think with comparative calmness, there arose in her heart a timid dread that Mr. Earnscliffe would not value her love now that she was free to give it to him, having once persuaded himself that it was its weakness which had made her give him up. She knew well his proud nature, and how it must have galled him to think that what he called mere prejudice was stronger in her than her love for him; he could not brook not to be first in the heart of one whom he loved.
As these thoughts filled her mind she exclaimed aloud, "God knows that Edwin has been the first sole possessor of my heart! Light—life—everything—he was to me from the time I first knew him. But how can I prove it to him? The proof he asked for I dared not give, or my love for him would not have been true; and yet this is my crime, in his eyes—to have obeyed God, and loved him too well! Oh, Father of mercy, open his eyes,—let him see how I have loved him!"
Flora could pray now as she had not done for a long time; she could now plead for re-union with her beloved, without wishing for the death of a fellow-creature; and the star of hope—hope even of earthly happiness—shone again for her, although the more she thought the dimmer grew its rays. Every line of Mr. Earnscliffe's book was replete with concentrated anger against her, or, at least, against what her religion had made her in his sight; but yet through it all there still pierced a glimmer of that bright star of hope.
She had sent Mr. Earnscliffe from her, so now she thought it only right that she should make the first advance towards a reconciliation, and therefore she wrote to him as follows:—
"Your wife is dead, Edwin, and now, indeed, am I free to devote myself to you, if you will accept my devotion. You are unhappy. Your book tells it to me, even if my own heart had not made me feel it ever since we parted. Let me then try to banish that unhappiness. Let me heal the wounds that obedience to heaven forced me to inflict upon you!
"As fondly as I loved you when we stood together at Achensee, do I love you still—or, rather, far deeper is my love now, for it has been tested by the fierce fire of sacrifice."