Then came the lamp and supper.
“You were asking when we should have a good fall?” went on Mr Brathwaite. “The first rains we get here will leave the mountains white as a sugarloaf down to their very foot.”
Thus, with many an anecdote and reminiscence, the evening wore on. Eventually the lights were extinguished in the slumbering house, one by one, till all was dark and silent. And shining upon upland and valley, and upon homestead and fold, cleaving the frosty sky with a broad path of pale incandescence, gleamed the Milky Way, with many a brilliant constellation flashing around its track. Hour follows upon hour, but the calm influences of the peaceful night bring no relief to that broken-hearted woman lying there with her face buried in the pillows, sorrowing as one who is without hope. And every now and then a great anguished sob shook the prostrate form, for a very torrent of long-pent-up grief had come over her this evening, fresh and poignant as on that terrible day when the glories of the radiant summer world were as staring mockeries.
Lilian rose and threw open the door. The cool night air flowed in refreshing waves upon her burning brow, and, oh! how solemnly the golden stars twinkled in the far blue vault as though the eyes of their Creator Himself were visibly looking down upon her woe.
“Come back to me, darling!” she wailed, her brimming eyes fixed on the cold, star-spangled sky. “Only come back. Ah, love! I sent you away from me, drove you away with hard, cruel, bitter words, and now my heart is breaking—breaking. My life is done. I killed it when I sent you away.”
A ghostly beam streamed in through the open casement. Above hung the pointed moon, pale, glassy, and cold.
“My life, my love, come back!” she continued, sinking into a chair by the window, with her hands tightly locked, in the extremity of her anguish. “Come back, and we will never part again, never. I will abjure my word, which I have pledged by a dying bed. I will risk everything. We will never, never part again, no, not for an hour. Only come back. Oh! What am I saying? I shall never see you again. Perhaps even now you are—dead, and it is I who killed you. Ah, love, my heart is broken! If you are not in life, come and look at me in death—in pale, cold, still death—and take me with you. Only let me look upon you once more!”
The moonbeam crept further along the polished floor, and a puff of air entered. Ah! What was that? Was it a voice—a name—faint, dreamy, more felt than heard—a voice from the awesome, mysterious spirit world? Quickly Lilian raised her head.
“I thought you would come to me, darling,” she murmured, in low, firm tones, as though she had nerved herself for an effort. “I thought you would come to me, even though dead. But let me see you! I can hear your voice. I can hear you call me, once, twice. But, oh! let me see you. Ah—!”
She sat upright and rigid, gazing in front of her. For a form floated upon the shadowy moonlight, seeming to rest everywhere, yet nowhere. And the features of the recumbent figure she knew too well—pale, haggard, and drawn as they were.