“Elsie,” said the old man, looking anxiously at his wife, as if afraid that her strength would give way, “Elsie was our only child. You see her now, a poor, brain-crazed old woman; gray-headed and broken-hearted; but then she was—”
“Oh!” broke in the old lady, with her eyes full of tears, that dimmed the glasses of her spectacles like a frost, “she was the dearest, the brightest, the most beautiful creature that ever trod the green grass. You don’t know—you can’t tell, how many sweet, wild ways she had, and all straight to the heart. He didn’t merely love her, nor did I; it was worship in us both; we idolized this child; there was not a curl of her black hair, or a glance of her eyes, bright and brimfull of feeling as they always were, which was not lovely beyond all things to us.
“Remember, Catharine, she was our only child, a late blessing; for we had been years married when God sent this angel to our fireside. You have seen her portrait in the library. It is like her, and yet the bright sparkle of her nature, the vivid flush of life, that came and went like sunshine upon the hills, this no man could paint. It is all over now. You can see nothing of what I am telling you in her wild eyes, or in the sharp features that are at times so rigid and again so stolid; but we find it still. Don’t we, husband? Isn’t she beautiful to us, even yet?”
“She is more than beautiful, our poor Elsie,” said the old man, looking through the window to where the demented one wandered to and fro on the grass, striving to catch the humming-birds that haunted a trumpet vine, by quick dashes of her hand among the clustering bells. “God has rendered her sacred—always and forever a child, spite of her gray hairs. They cast her back upon our hearthstone, a poor, broken waif, but still a blessing.
“I think,” continued the old man, “that it was a little before her seventeenth birthday, when Elsie first saw that man. He was a dashing young fellow, who had just come into possession of a large property, and had returned from his travels abroad, before entering upon the business of life. A neighbor, who lives across the Island, had invited him for a long visit, and through this friend he was introduced into our family.
“We did not think it strange, that young De Marke should admire our Elsie. Who could help it? But when she, who had always been bright as a bird and as heart-free, began to look thoughtful in his absence, and shy in his presence, it pained us a good deal; for she seemed still a mere child, and we had hoped to keep her in the home-nest a few years longer.
“It was a wild, violent passion on both sides. We had no power to resist, for he came with his impetuous pleading, and she, with a thousand winning ways, sometimes lost in tears, sometimes bathed in smiles, lured us from our better judgment. She was far too young, too ardent. Oh! we should not have consented.
“This De Marke was of French origin, as you will judge by his name, mercurial and impulsive, as most of the blood are. I do not think he was a bad or faithless man at heart. I know that he loved Elsie, not as she loved him—that was impossible—but he did love her!”
“Yes,” murmured the old lady, “he did love her. Who could help it?”