The dead face holds its secret well. A rugged, unhandsome one at the best, it is softened by the last change; the sneer has gone out of it, and an almost grand composure settles in its place. Floyd Grandon studies it intently. A few trifling circumstances roused his distrust, and—was it destined beforehand that he should cross Wilmarth at every turn? He has saved his enemy's honor as well as his own, and a great pity moves him.
Floyd attends Marcia; no one else can control her. Eugene takes Violet and his mother, Mr. Murray has his own pretty daughter and Madame Lepelletier. Besides this there is a long procession to the church, and carriages without number to the beautiful cemetery two miles distant. The world may not have much admired Mr. Wilmarth, but it knows nothing against him, and his romantic marriage was in his favor. So he is buried with all due respect in that depository of so many secrets, marred and gnarled and ruined lives.
Marcia is brought home to her brother's and takes to her bed. The day following is Sunday, a glorious, sun-ripe September day. The air is rich with ripening fruit, the pungent odor of drying balsams, chrysanthemums coming into bloom, and asters starring the hillsides. The sky is a faultless blue overhead, the river takes its tint and flows on, a broad blue ribbon between rocky shores. A strange, calm day that moves every one to silence and tender solemnity.
But to Sunday succeeds the steady tramp of business. Fortunately for Marcia, and Floyd as well, Mr. Wilmarth has made a will in the first flush of marital satisfaction, bequeathing nearly everything to her, except a few legacies. It increased her adoration at the time, and did no harm to him since he knew he could change it if he saw passionately, decorously, and she can also enjoy her new found liberty.
Laura's return is next in order, and she is not a little surprised at the changes. The Murrays are still at Grandon Park; Floyd insists upon this, as he really does not want Marcia to return, brotherly kind as he proves to her. The Latimers go to the city, and the professor is again domiciled a brief while at the cottage that seems so like home. Laura and Mr. Delancy set up a house of their own, and Marcia has a craze about the furnishing, making herself quite useful. Laura considers her rather picturesque, with the brief romance for background. But Eugene's engagement delights her.
"Upon my word, mamma," she exclaims, "you are a singularly fortunate dowager! Just think; less than a year and a half ago we were a doleful lot, sitting around our ancestral hearth, which was Floyd's, spinsters in abundance, and a woful lack of the fine gold of life, without which one is nobody. And here you have two distinguished married daughters, an interesting widow, a son who will serenely shadow himself under the wings of a millionnaire, and—well, I can almost forgive Floyd for marrying that red-haired little nonentity. Who ever supposed she was going to have such a fortune? And if she should have no children, Eugene may one day be master of Grandon Park! Who can tell?"
For, after all, Floyd's interests seem hardly identical with their own.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Passion is both raised and softened by confession. In nothing perhaps were the middle way more desirable than in knowing what to say and what not to say to those we love.—Goethe.