“Yes. When I think of it I can recall every word. That letter is stamped upon my memory, Lilith, as you say my sentence of banishment is upon yours.”
“Then, Tudor, will you now recall what I said on bidding you good-bye? It was something like this—though I cannot recall the precise words—I told you that though I should not trouble you by my presence, or my letters, yet neither should I take any pains to hide myself from you. I told you that if the time should ever come when, after revising your judgment of me, you should see reason to retract your charges against me, and should ask me to return to you, I would return and would be all to you in the future that I had been in the past. Do you remember reading that in my farewell letter, Tudor?”
“Yes, yes! I do, I do! And oh, my child, I do retract all the cruel charges that Satan and false shows ever goaded me to make. I believe you to be as pure in mind and heart and life as any angel that stands before the Throne,” he said, bending over her chair.
“Thank Heaven!” she fervently breathed.
“And you forgive me, Lilith?”
“I have more cause to ask forgiveness than to extend it,” she answered, humbly.
“No, no!” he exclaimed, deprecatingly.
“Tudor,” she said, “you say that you esteem me—that you trust me; and I thank Heaven for that! But—Tudor—do you love me?” she inquired, in a low, thrilling, pathetic tone.
“I love you more than my own life, so help me Heaven!” replied Hereward, in such tones of impassioned earnestness that no one who heard them could have doubted their truth.
Lilith arose and turned, fronting him, and said: