It seems then, that our dear children love each other so well, that it is beyond our right, even as parents, to forbid their marriage. I ask from you, for my son, who is a humble and ardent suitor for Miss Moran’s hand, all the favour his sincere devotion to her deserves, We have both been young, we have both loved, accept then his affection as some atonement for any grievance or injustice you remember against myself. Had we known each other better, we should doubtless have loved each other better; but now that marriage will make us kin, I offer you my hand, with all it implies of regret for the past, and of respect for the future. Your servant to command,
RICHARD HYDE.
“It is the greatest proof of my love I can give you, George,” said the Earl, when the letter had been read; “and it is Annie you must thank for it. She dropped the thought into my heart, and if the thought has silently grown to these written words, it is because she had put many other good thoughts there, and that these helped this one to come to perfection.”
“Have you noticed, father, how small and fragile-looking she is? Can she really be slowly dying?”
“No, she is not dying; she is only going a little further away—a little further away, every hour. Some hour she will be called, and she will answer, and we shall see her no more—HERE. But I do not call that dying, and if it be dying, Annie will go as calmly and simply, as if she were fulfilling some religious rite or duty. She loves God, and she will go to Him.”
The next morning Hyde left his father’s home forever. It was impossible that such a parting should be happy. No hopes, no dreams of future joy, could make him forget the wealth of love he was leaving. Nor did he wish to forget. And woe to the man or woman who would buy composure and contentment by forgetting!—by really forfeiting a portion of their existence—by being a suicide of their own moral nature.
The day was a black winter day, with a monotonous rain and a dark sky troubled by a ghostly wind. Inside the house the silence fell on the heart like a weight. The Earl and Countess watched their son’s carriage turn from the door, and then looked silently into each other’s face. The Earl’s lips were firmly set, and his eyes full of tears; the Countess was weeping bitterly. He went with her to her room, and with all his old charm and tenderness comforted her for her great loss.
At that moment Annie was forgotten, yet no one was suffering more than she was. Hyde had knelt by her sofa, and taken her in his arms, and covered her face with tears and kisses, and she had not been able to oppose a parting so heart-breaking and so final. The last tears she was ever to shed dropped from her closed eyes, as she listened to his departing steps; and the roll of the carriage carrying him away forever, seemed to roll over her shrinking heart. She cried out feebly—a pitiful little shrill cry, that she hushed with a sob still more full of anguish. Then she began to cast over her suffering soul the balm of prayer, and prostrate with closed eyes, and hands feebly hanging down, Doctor Roslyn found her. He did not need to ask a question, he had long known the brave self-sacrifice that was consecrating the child-heart suffering so sharply that day; and he said only—
“We are made perfect through suffering, Annie.”
“I know, dear father.”