"Dear Gerald," said Mr. Weston tenderly, "it was like you. How blind I must have been! but I can see it now. Noble heart! Dear noble friend! I think I never fully valued you till now."
"You would have done the same by me, Richard," said Mr. Hart.
"I do not know--I do not know; I doubt if I should have had the courage to fly. If I had been in your place--you with your higher gifts were the first in everything, Gerald; I was content always to walk behind you--I am afraid that I should have stopped and tried my fortune."
"No, no," said Mr. Hart, in gentle remonstrance; "I know you better than you know yourself. You would have acted as I did. Your friendship was as honest as mine. There could be no rivalry in love between us."
"I honour you more than ever, Gerald."
"It was a sacrifice, Richard, you can understand that; but I said to myself, this sunny spot in life which I laid out for myself, and in which I hoped to bask and lie in happiness--I had that hope, Richard, before I discovered that Clara loved you--is not to be mine; it is my friend's; but I will be revenged upon him; and who knows, dear friend, but that I may yet be!"
His tone was very sweet as he uttered these words, the deep significance of which was not comprehended by either of them. The time was soon to come when they bore strange fruit.
"I bless her memory," Mr. Hart continued. "Her goodness and purity made many things sweet to me. That I loved her and left her--conscious that it was imperative upon me to do so for the sake both of love and friendship--did not make me a despairing man. In course of time my grief was softened; I formed other ties, one of which remains to me now, thank God; and through all my wanderings I never lost faith in woman or woman's purity. If, in a cynical mood, it ever came upon me to doubt, I thought of her, and the doubt was dissolved. It may be, Richard, that in the wise ordination of things, her spirit can see us now!"
In the silence that followed, the thoughts of both these men dwelt in tenderness on the memory of the gentle girl who had parted them. Mr. Hart was the first to break the silence.
"Where is she buried, Richard?"