She took a letter from her breast, and kissed it, and said ‘Yes.’
‘That through these intervening years, however happy she might be, she would look forward to the time when you would meet again, and all would be made clear; and that she prayed you, trustfully and hopefully to do the same. The letter runs so, does it not, my dear?’
‘Yes, Alfred.’
‘And every other letter she has written since?’
‘Except the last—some months ago—in which she spoke of you, and what you then knew, and what I was to learn to-night.’
He looked towards the sun, then fast declining, and said that the appointed time was sunset.
‘Alfred!’ said Grace, laying her hand upon his shoulder earnestly, ‘there is something in this letter—this old letter, which you say I read so often—that I have never told you. But, to-night, dear husband, with that sunset drawing near, and all our life seeming to soften and become hushed with the departing day, I cannot keep it secret.’
‘What is it, love?’
‘When Marion went away, she wrote me, here, that you had once left her a sacred trust to me, and that now she left you, Alfred, such a trust in my hands: praying and beseeching me, as I loved her, and as I loved you, not to reject the affection she believed (she knew, she said) you would transfer to me when the new wound was healed, but to encourage and return it.’
‘—And make me a proud, and happy man again, Grace. Did she say so?’