"Had it not been for your wounded arm," replied Edith, laying her hand gently on the scar, "we should have supposed he was under a strong delusion to believe a lie. Appearances were against you, and your condemnation was my brother's palliation, if not acquittal. My mother continued her supplications, mingled with tears and sighs that seemed to rend the life from her bosom; and I, Gabriella, do you think I was silent and passive? I, who would willingly have laid down my life for his? We prevailed,—he yielded,—he left us in the darkness of night,—the darkness of despair. It is more than two months since, and we have received no tidings of the wanderer. My mother urged him to go to New York and remain till he heard the fate of Richard. She has written to him there, again and again, but as yet has received no answer."
"And he went without one farewell look of her whom he deemed so vile,—so lost?" said I, pressing Edith's hand against my cold and sinking heart.
"No, Gabriella. His last act was to kneel by your side, and pray God to forgive you both. Twice he went to the door, then coming back he bent over you as if he would clasp you in his arms; then with a wild ejaculation he turned away. Never saw I such anguish in the human countenance."
"I have but one question more to ask," said I, after a long pause, whose dreariness was that which follows the falling of the clods in the grave hollow. "How did Ernest know that Richard was with me, when we left him alone in the library?"
"Dr. Harlowe accidentally alluded to your father's history before Richard, who, you recollect, was in foreign lands during the excitement it caused, and had never heard the circumstances. As soon as he heard the name of St. James, I saw him start, and turn to the doctor with a flushed and eager countenance. Then he drew him one side, and they conversed together some time in a low undertone; and Richard's face, red one moment and white the next, flashed with strange and shifting emotions. At the time when your father's name obtained such unhappy notoriety, and yours through him, in the public papers, my mother confided to Dr. Harlowe, who was greatly troubled on your account, the particulars of your mother's life. She thought it due to your mother's memory, and his steady friendship. I know not how much he told Richard, whose manner evidently surprised him, but we all noticed that he was greatly agitated; and then he abruptly took leave. He came immediately here, and inquired for you, asked where you were gone, and hurried away as if on an errand of life and death. Ernest, who was passing along the winding gallery, heard him, and followed."
Another dreary pause. Then I remembered Julian, and the love-light that had illumined them both that memorable evening. Edith had not once alluded to her own clouded hopes. She seemed to have forgotten herself in her mother's griefs and mine.
"And Julian, my beloved Edith? There is a future for you, a happy one, is there not?"
"I do not expect happiness," she answered, with a sigh; "but Julian's love will gild the gloom of sorrow, and be the rainbow of my clouded days. He will return in the winter, and then perhaps he will not leave me again. I cannot quit my mother; but he can take a son's place in her desolated home. No garlands of roses will twine round my bridal hours, for they are all withered, all but the rose of Sharon, Gabriella, whose sacred bloom can never fade away. It is the only flower worth cherishing,—the only one without thorns, and without blight."
Softly withdrawing her supporting arms, she suffered me to sink back on the pillow, gave me a reviving cordial, drew the curtains, and taking up a book, seemed absorbed in its contents. I closed my eyes and appeared to sleep, that she might not suppose her narration had banished repose. I had anticipated all she uttered; but the certainty of desolation is different to the agonies of suspense. I could have borne the separation from Ernest; but that he should believe me the false, guilty wretch I had seemed to be, inflicted pangs sharper than the vulture's beak or the arrow's barb. If he had left the country, as there was every reason to suppose he had, with this conviction, he never would return; and the loneliness and dreariness of a widowhood more sad than that which death creates, would settle down darkly and heavily on my young life.
I did not blame him for the rash deed he had wrought, for it was a madman's act. When I recalled the circumstances, I did not wonder at the frantic passion that dyed his hand in blood; and yet I could not blame myself. Had I shrunk from a brother's embrace, I should have been either more or less than woman. I had yielded to a divine impulse, and could appeal to nature and Heaven for justification.