"In the gray light of that morning, I went down to the death chamber. General Harrington and James received me in mournful silence. I had no heart even for unspoken reproaches, there. If ever forgiveness was glorified, I saw it on that sweet, dear face.
"We passed a gloomy day. The shock has been terrible to James, terrible to us all—for the General is greatly disturbed, and, as for the slave-girl, her grief is fearful; she raves rather than weeps, and trembles like an aspen at the mention of her dead lady's name.
"With the solemn burial services of the Catholic Church, we have consigned the remains of this lovely woman to her grave, and now my loneliness is complete. My own poor heart seems to have partaken of the chill that has quenched her life. I am weary of this beautiful land—weary of everything—alone and unloved; for now I am almost sure my own wild brain coined the words that seemed to come from his lips in the storm—alone, unloved—what remains for me but——
"A great disappointment has fallen upon General Harrington. A will is found, and every dollar of his wife's property is left to her son. All this seems incomprehensible. I pity the proud old man.
——"It is all over now! Oh, Heaven, that I should have so deceived myself! Harrington loves another—Lucy whom he has known almost since childhood, and from whom a series of untoward circumstances separated him. There is, there can be no doubt—no room for a single hope—the General himself informed me of it to-day.
"I cannot write—I cannot even think! There is a strange confusion in my brain—a fever in my heart which give me no rest. I long for some one to advise me—some one to whom I can look for sympathy—but I have no counsellor. Kindred—mine are in the grave! Friends—the last one sleeps in the cemetery yonder—in the wide world I am utterly alone. The General grows kinder to me daily, but to him how could I speak of all these things? No! I must bury the secret deep, deep in my own heart—must endure this suffering in silence and alone.
"I have but one wish now—could I but be the means of uniting James Harrington with the woman he loves. The only consolation left to me, would be to know that he was happy, and that it was to me he owed that happiness. But I can do nothing; the General only hinted at some mysterious history, and he requested me to consider all that he had revealed as sacred. Is this the secret? Does Lucy Eaton suspect the unworthiness which it kills me to know?
"Six months in a convent. It is too late to look back, or to retract anything I have promised. I have consented to become General Harrington's wife—to fill the place of one who took me to her heart as if I had been her own child, bestowing upon me the fondness which I could have no right to claim, except from a mother.
"The change I had remarked in the General's manner was not fancy, as I strove to think. He desires to make me his wife. He alluded to it yesterday for the first time, and to-night I gave him my answer. I can but confess that the arguments he employed were just; a young girl could not remain in the house with a man no older than he without being connected to him by a nearer tie than that which binds us. He spoke to me very kindly, more gently and tenderly than I had thought he could do. He believes that I have formed no other attachment, or, if not entirely heart free, it was but a girlish fancy, which had no real basis. He assures me that I shall be happy as his wife, but my heart answers how impossible that is! I do not ask happiness—let me but find quiet and contentment—I seek no more.
"A year has gone by. We are in America again. General Harrington will join me to-morrow. Ay, it is better thus—I would have it over. Perhaps, in the peaceful home I shall find in my native land, I may learn to still this poor heart to rest. I long to return.