“After the wedding, you remember, we took leave of my dear father, who promised to visit us the ensuing spring, but who never kept his promise, because he died suddenly of heart disease during that winter.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
A CLOUDED HONEYMOON
“We went down to Liverpool and sailed for America, to commence our new life on your Maryland plantation.
“But, oh, Abel! with a burden of sorrow and remorse on my heart and conscience which has oppressed and darkened all my days.
“In the first winter of our marriage news came to us of my father’s death, and we mourned him deeply, as you know. Added to grief for his loss was anxiety for the fate of the child he had promised to adopt and educate. No news came to me of my boy. I knew not even if the quarterly payments had been kept up. When we went to Baltimore, however, to buy my mourning outfit, I took the opportunity to send a bill of exchange for a hundred pounds to Mary Chester on account, and asked her to send me news of the boy, and to direct her letter to Bryantown, to which place I intended to go, and I did go at intervals, in hope to find a letter, but none ever came.
“In the spring I received a terrible shock. Report came that a schooner had been wrecked on the shore, and that but one life had been saved—the life of a child who had been washed up on the sands and found there living.
“This child I heard was at the house of Miss Bayard, who was taking care of him.
“I went—as everybody went—from curiosity to see the little waif.
“There happened to be no visitor at the house when I entered Miss Bayard’s parlor. She was talkative, as usual, and told me all about the wreck and rescue as it is known to you and to all that community. And she took me into the bedroom adjoining the parlor to look upon the sleeping boy.
“There he lay upon the clean patchwork quilt, crosswise upon the bed, his flaxen head upon the snowy pillow, a gray woolen shawl spread over him.