"Dear Graves!" Griselda exclaimed; "what does she say?" She took the letter, written in a round clerkly hand from her husband, and read:
"Dear and Honoured Sir:
"This leaves me well; but I have to inform you my poor mistress departed this life yesterday. I prayed by her, and asked the Lord to pardon her. Honoured sir—and you, dear Madam Travers—that bad man, Sir Maxwell Danby, behaved so ill, that she had to leave his home. He is gone to foreign parts again, and let us hope never to return. He treated my poor mistress shameful, and she was made miserable. We went to Bath for last season, but she was too ill to enter into gaieties, and sank into a sad state—mind and body.
"I send my duty to you, honoured sir, and the dear lady, your wife, and remain,
"Your humble servant,
"Amelia Graves."
Griselda's sweet face became very grave as she read this letter. Then she folded it and returned it to her husband.
"I should like Graves to come and live with us, and take care of her in her old age. Might I ask her?"
Then Leslie bent over his wife, and kissing her, said:
"I knew that would be your wish. I will write by next post to Bath, and bid her come hither. She was good to you when you were in trouble, and won my lasting gratitude."
"Poor Lady Betty! Oh that she ever was so blind—so foolish—as to marry that dreadful man! I never see his name without a shudder!"
The news this letter contained had brought back to the happy wife and mother many sad memories; but the past did not long cloud her present.
As she put her hand into her husband's arm that evening when the children were asleep, and no sound broke the silence as they paced the garden walk, she stopped suddenly, and said:
"Dearest, you have made my life so beautiful. You have taught me so much. You said once—do you remember?—you would die for me, or live for me! You have lived for me, and I——"