In common with most children, she had always dreamed of a mysterious fate for herself, different from the commonplace routine around her. Ruth's revelations, far from daunting her, far from making her feel like cringing before the world in gratitude for its tolerance of her bar sinister, seemed a fascinatingly tragic confirmation of her romantic longings and beliefs. No doubt it was the difference from the common lot that had attracted Sam to her; and this difference would make their love wholly unlike the commonplace Sutherland wooing and wedding. Yes, hers had been a mysterious fate, and would continue to be. Nora, an old woman now, had often related in her presence how Doctor Stevens had brought her to life when she lay apparently, indeed really, dead upon the upstairs sitting-room table—Doctor Stevens and Nora's own prayers. An extraordinary birth, in defiance of the laws of God and man; an extraordinary resurrection, in defiance of the laws of nature—yes, hers would be a life superbly different from the common. And when she and Sam married, how gracious and forgiving she would be to all those bad-hearted people; how she would shame them for their evil thoughts against her mother and herself!
The Susan Lenox who sat alone at the little table in the dining-room window, eating bread and butter and honey in the comb, was apparently the same Susan Lenox who had taken three meals a day in that room all those years—was, indeed, actually the same, for character is not an overnight creation. Yet it was an amazingly different Susan Lenox, too. The first crisis had come; she had been put to the test; and she had not collapsed in weakness but had stood erect in strength.
After breakfast she went down Main Street and at Crooked Creek Avenue took the turning for the cemetery. She sought the Warham plot, on the western slope near the quiet brook. There was a clump of cedars at each corner of the plot; near the largest of them were three little graves—the three dead children of George and Fanny. In the shadow of the clump and nearest the brook was a fourth grave apart and, to the girl, now thrillingly mysterious:
LORELLA LENOX BORN MAY 9, 1859 DIED JULY 17, 1879
Twenty years old! Susan's tears scalded her eyes. Only a little older than her cousin Ruth was now—Ruth who often seemed to her, and to everybody, younger than herself. "And she was good—I know she was good!" thought Susan. "He was bad, and the people who took his part against her were bad. But she was good!"
She started as Sam's voice, gay and light, sounded directly behind her. "What are you doing in a graveyard?" cried he.
"How did you find me?" she asked, paling and flushing and paling again.
"I've been following you ever since you left home."
He might have added that he did not try to overtake her until they were where people would be least likely to see.
"Whose graves are those?" he went on, cutting across a plot and stepping on several graves to join her.