It was when Alma was about ten years of age that Mrs. Elverton received the only news of her husband since the day of his strange disappearance. This was contained in an annonymous letter from St. Petersburg, announcing his decease in that city. Mrs. Elverton immediately wrote to the British Ministry at that Court, to ascertain the facts of the case; but after the most careful investigation, the utmost extent of information she obtained was this, that a stranger, an Englishman, of the name of Elverton, had died at St. Petersburg. He had left no papers to afford a clue to his identity; his linen and boxes were marked “H. Elverton.” And at the time that this inquiry was set on foot the body of the stranger had been too long buried to afford the slightest possibility of its being identified even if disinterred; and under these circumstances the sanctity of the grave had not been violated.
Mrs. Elverton never discovered the writer of the annonymous letter. She did not consider the intelligence she had received of sufficient reliability to warrant her in publishing the death of Mr. Elverton, or in placing her family in mourning. Yet those most familiar with the lady’s moods thought that in her secret heart she believed in the death of her husband, and derived satisfaction from the belief, for it was observed that from the day she first received the intelligence—true or false—her countenance, though retaining all its profound melancholy, lost its unnatural expression of horror and despair.
Still, she took no delight in the society of her innocent daughter; still she attended no place of public worship; received no company and paid no visits, except visits of condolence to the houses of affliction, or of charity to the abodes of poverty.
And so passed the years of Alma’s childhood. The young girl, if unfortunate in her mother, was blessed in her governess—a woman of a Christian heart, a cultivated, mind, and accomplished manners—who conscientiously devoted herself to the temporal and eternal welfare of her young charge.
It was to this lady that Alma owed not only all her worldly education, but all her religious instruction. It was through her governess that Alma was prepared for the Christian rites of baptism and confirmation, both of which she received when she was about fifteen years of age.
But after this Alma lost her friend, companion, and governess.
The curate to whom Miss Moore had been betrothed for eight years at length obtained a living, and claimed the long-promised hand of his bride, who took leave of her friends at Edenlawn, and went to make the happiness of a humble parsonage in Yorkshire.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE STRANGE INTERVIEW.
“And now they are standing face to face;
Hath a dream come over that sylvan place?