“Ay, ay,” he continued with a smile, as if of triumph in his own pangs, “so that truth is confessed at last! And when, once more free, you wrote to me the letter I returned, rent in fragments, to your hand—or when, forgiving my rude outrage and fierce reproach, you spoke to me so gently yonder, a few weeks since, in these lonely shades, then what were your sentiments, your motives? Were they not those of a long-suppressed and kind remorse? of a charity akin to that which binds rich to poor, bows happiness to suffering?—some memories of gratitude—nay, perhaps of childlike affection?—all amiable, all generous, all steeped in that sweetness of nature to which I unconsciously rendered justice in the anguish I endured in losing you; but do not tell me that even then you were under the influence of woman’s love.”
“Darrell, I was not.”
“You own it, and you suffer me to see you again! Trifler and cruel one, is it but to enjoy the sense of your undiminished, unalterable power?”
“Alas, Darrell! alas! why am I here?—why so yearning, yet so afraid to come? Why did my heart fail when these trees rose in sight against the sky?—why, why—why was it drawn hither by the spell I could not resist? Alas, Darrell, alas! I am a woman now—and—and this—”
She lowered her veil, and turned away; her lips could not utter the word, because the word was not pity, not remorse, not remembrance, not even affection; and the woman loved now too well to subject to the hazard of rejection—LOVE!
“Stay, oh stay!” cried Darrell. “Oh that I could dare to ask you to complete the sentence! I know—I know by the mysterious sympathy of my own soul, that you could never deceive me more! Is it—is it—”
His lips falter too; but her hand is clasped in his; her head is reclining upon his breast; the veil is withdrawn from the sweet downcast face; and softly on her ear steal the murmured words, “Again and now, till the grave—Oh, by this hallowing kiss, again—the Caroline of old!”
Fuller and fuller, spreading, wave after wave, throughout the air, till it seemed interfused and commingled with the breath which the listeners breathe, the flute’s mellow gush streams along. The sun slopes in peace towards the west; not a cloud in those skies, clearer seen through yon boughs stripped of leaves, and rendering more vivid the evergreen of the arbute and laurel.
Lionel and Sophy are now seated on yon moss-grown trunk, on either side the old grey-haired man, as if agreeing for a while even to forget each. other, that they may make him feel how fondly he is remembered. Sophy is resting both her hands on the old man’s shoulder, looking into his face, and murmuring in his ear with voice like the coo of a happy dove. Ah, fear not, Sophy; he is happy too—he who never thinks of himself. Look—the playful smile round his arch lips; look—now he is showing off Sir Isaac to Vance; with austere solemnity the dog goes through his tricks; and Vance, with hand stroking his chin, is moralising on all that might have befallen had he grudged his three pounds to that famous INVESTMENT.
Behind that group, shadowed by the Thorn-tree, stands the PREACHER, thoughtful and grave, foreseeing the grief that must come to the old man with the morrow, when he will learn that a guilty son nears his end, and will hasten to comfort Jasper’s last days with pardon. But the Preacher looks not down to the death-couch alone; on and high over death looks the Preacher! By what words Heavenly Mercy may lend to his lips shall he steal away, yet in time, to the soul of the dying, and justify murmurs of hope to the elm of a life so dark with the shades of its past? And to him, to the Preacher, they who survive—the two mourners will come in their freshness of sorrow! He, the old man? Nay, to him there will be comfort. His spirit Heaven’s kindness had tempered to trials; and, alas for that son, what could father hope more than a death free from shame, and a chance yet vouchsafed for repentance? But she, the grim, iron-grey woman? The Preacher’s interest, I know, will soon centre on her:—And balm may yet drop on thy wounds, thou poor, grim, iron-grey, loving woman.