There were loving interviews with Mrs Leigh, and much talk over Lucian’s last hours, almost, on the mother’s side, as if there had been no breach of the betrothal. Mrs Leigh gave Amethyst back the photograph of Lucian as she had first known him, with its perfect outlines, like a Greek masque, and firm, unvarying expression, and another, much more beautiful in Amethyst’s eyes, taken during his last illness, with all the forms sharpened and chiselled away, the lines of pain round eyes and mouth, but with the look that made it like the picture of Lucian’s soul instead of his body.
Amethyst took them as treasures indeed, but she was the comforter, not the comforted, in the intercourse with Lucian’s mother, for the admiration of him was sweeter to her than the loss was sad.
Then came a great surprise, the bequest from Lucian of 5,000 pounds, “as a token that if I could, I would have given her all I possess.”
The codicil to his will was dated after he had given her back her ring, and Mrs Leigh told her that he had often thought of it, but had not ventured to do it till she had once more given him the right, and that he had said that he wished her to have her life in her own hands.
Then she knew that he had fully understood her difficulties, and what a difference independence might make to her. One thing that she had dreaded was saved her.
Carrie Carisbrooke wrote so clear a history to her uncle of the appearance of Lady Clyste at Monte Carlo, that he made no attempt to see Amethyst again; but wrote that he would meet his niece on business matters when she returned to England, and Amethyst was saved from an interview, of which she could only think with a shudder of horror.
Lucian was buried on a still, bright day, when the spring seemed to have made a great advance, and the air was warm and sweet. Amethyst went out on the hill afterwards and sat down in her favourite place among the olive woods, and presently Sylvester came and joined her. He was pale and anxious, though his eyes were bright and eager.
“I have brought this to show you,” he said gravely, taking out a little Russia-leather pocket-book, worn and shabby.
“It was Lucy’s,” he said, sitting down by her side. “He kept it as long as he could, and then one day, he pushed it into my hand, and told me to look at it—afterwards.”
The pocket-book contained old dates as to the starting of trains and steamers, records of the slaughter of tigers and elephants, little notes of matters to be attended to on the estate at Toppings. In the pocket was a little old photograph of Amethyst, and a note asking him to come over and play tennis, dated in the second week of her acquaintance with him, and never returned with the “love letters” written afterwards. Sylvester showed her these relics in silence, then he turned to the blank pages at the end of the book on which was written in faint broken characters, very different from the small distinct writing of the earlier entries—