| "Then steal away, give little warning, |
| Choose thine own time; |
| Say not good-night, but, in some brighter clime, |
| Bid me good-morning." |
When Anne knew that the funeral was over, that another grave had been made under the snow in the little military cemetery, and that, with the strange swiftness which is so hard for mourning hearts to realize, daily life was moving on again in the small island circle where the kind old face would be seen no more, she sent her letter, the same old letter, unaltered and travel-worn. Then she waited. She could not receive her answer before the eighth or ninth day. But on the fifth came two letters; on the seventh, three. The first were from Miss Lois and Mrs. Bryden; the others from Tita, Père Michaux, and—Rast. And the extraordinary tidings they brought were these: Rast had married Tita. The little sister was now his wife.
CHAPTER XXII.
"A slave had long worn a chain upon his ankle. By the order of his master it was removed. 'Why dost thou spring aloft and sing, O slave? Surely the sun is as fierce and thy burden as heavy as before.' The slave replied: 'Ten times the sun and the burden would seem light, now that the chain is removed.'"—From the Arabic.
Miss Lois's letter was a wail:
"My poor dear outraged Child,—What can I say to you? There is no use in trying to prepare you for it, since you would never conceive such double-dyed blackness of heart! Tita has run away. She slipped off clandestinely, and they think she has followed Rast, who left yesterday on his way back to St. Louis and the West. Père Michaux has followed her, saying that if he found them together he should, acting as Tita's guardian, insist upon a marriage before he returned! He feels himself responsible for Tita, he says, and paid no attention when I asked him if no one was to be responsible for you! My poor child, it seems that I have been blind all along; I never dreamed of what was going on. The little minx deceived me completely. I thought her so much improved, so studious, while all the time she was meeting Erastus, or planning to meet him, with a skill far beyond my comprehension. All last summer, they tell me, she was with him constantly; those daily journeys to Père Michaux's island were for that purpose, while I supposed they were for prayers. What Erastus thought or meant, no one seems to know; but they all combined in declaring that the child (child no longer!) was deeply in love with him, and that everybody saw it save me. My New England blood could not, I am proud to say, grasp it! You know, my poor darling, the opinion I have always had concerning Tita's mother, who slyly and artfully inveigled your honored father into a trap. Tita has therefore but followed in her mother's footsteps.
"That Erastus has ever cared, or cares now in the least, for her, save as a plaything, I will never believe. But Père Michaux is like a mule for stubbornness, as you know, and I fear he will marry them in any case. He did not seem to think of you at all, and when I said, 'Anne will die of grief!' he only smiled—yes, smiled—and Frenchly shrugged his shoulders! My poor child, I have but little hope, because if he appeals to Erastus's honor, what can the boy do? He is the soul of honor.
"I can hardly write, my brain has been so overturned. To think that Tita should have outwitted us all at her age, and gained her point over everything, over you and over Rast—poor, poor Rast, who will be so miserably sacrificed! I will write again to-morrow; but if Père Michaux carries out his strange Jesuitical design, you will hear from him probably before you can hear again from me. Bear up, my dearest Anne. I acknowledge that, so far, I have found it difficult to see the Divine purpose in this, unless indeed it be to inform us that we are all but cinders and ashes; which, however, I for one have long known."
Mrs. Bryden's letter: