They talked of the future, and peopled it with wild dreams, like children, until it all became as real to them as their own being.
There was a strange and mournful romance, connected with the origin of Moione’s family, that pointed at possible realizations in another country, through inheritance, that would be as gorgeous as the creations of Aladdin’s lamp. They talked of these prospects as of facts assumed, and of all the high-thoughted enterprises of the day which promised to be of true benefit to mankind, as already achieved, through their aid; and, with magnanimous simplicity, were already distributing hoarded and rusting millions to bless the world withal. These were gay day-dreams; but they were innocent, and, although they may never be realized, they gave them joy—inspired the yet feeble Manton with a future.
There could be but one result to all this. His health was rapidly restored; and when Manton married Moione, which he soon did, his soul now first found rest. The last that was spoken between them concerning Elna was in a conversation soon after, when she casually asked him—
“Did Elna show you my drawings, when you came back from the North?”
“Your drawings? your drawings? She showed me some, the delicacy and calm precision of which, I remember, vainly intoxicated me with delight. But why do you ask, dear?”
“Why, she carried off from me, about that time, certain studies of human anatomy, which I had elaborated much, and which I valued. As I have never been able to recover them, after repeatedly requesting their return, I thought, perhaps, she might have shown them to you, and then thrown them aside, through forgetfulness.”
“Ah! ha!” said Manton, “I remember now. They were assiduously paraded before me by her as her own. In spite of my recognition of the fact, that she did not possess originally, and must have very suddenly acquired, the constitutional steadiness and delicacy of touch necessary to accomplish drawings so fine and exquisitely accurate, I never dreamed of imposition, of course; and thus, with fatal credulity, set down to her credit, from what she had stolen of you, a new and infinitely significant attribute, which I had heretofore, specially and hopelessly, in spite of my passion, denied to her.”
“Let us forget it now,” was the quiet response. “She is only harmful to either of us, as you may remember morbidly the relations which have existed between you; the delusion is over.”
Such was the fact, indeed. Manton had at last found his artist-wife, and a true and wondrous artist did she prove indeed, realising his fond, high dream. Under this blessed and holy guardianship, he had returned fully to the realities of a true existence. He now saw, felt, and understood all that had occurred in that long shuddering dream; and this reality he had attained seemed only the more unutterably precious.
When the calm Moione revealed to him all the secret of the bleak and poverty-stricken desolation, in which he found her living, he was not at all astonished to find that her mother, who was a generous, trusting, noble-hearted zealot of Water-cure, had been another of the many victims of Boanerges Phospher, the “Spiritual Professor.” He had not only stripped her widowed isolation of all the appliances of household comfort, which years of devoted and self-sacrificing labor had enabled her to collect and throw together, in respectable defence between her helpless children and common want, but had absolutely turned her out of doors, without even spoon, or knife, or fork left her, of all this little property which she had thrown in rashly, perhaps, but earnestly, and with a noble dedication of her widow’s mite, towards furnishing a Water-cure establishment.