"Well, the next day; I will call for you," said Henry. "You can not refuse to take one last walk with me?"
"I have no disposition to refuse," replied Jennie, as she turned slowly and sadly from the spot.
"Ellen, how could you!" said Carrie with flashing eyes, "so short a time as Jennie is to be with us, and yet you make her miserable?"
"She shall not come between me and happiness with her soft and hypocritical ways!" said Ellen, snapping off the leaves of a twig near her, and looking upon the retreating figures of her sister and cousin, who were going up the avenue. Then turning to a point where she could see in the distance the dim form of Henry Moore, she took the seat that her cousin had vacated, and gave vent to a keener anguish, but how different!
CHAPTER XXVI.
"Come, girls," said Mr. Halberg, as the young ladies descended from their rooms equipped for church, "the bell has been tolling for some time, I fear we shall be late. Where's Ellen?" he continued, casting his eyes over the group and missing his eldest daughter.
"She is not well to-day, papa, and prefers remaining at home with mother," said Carrie. "Nothing serious," added she, observing her father's anxious and troubled look. "She said she would try to sleep, and perhaps that would banish her head-ache so that she would be able to go with us this afternoon;" and the party left the house, and calling for Mrs. Dunmore and Rosalie, they all proceeded to the church.
The walk was rural and quiet, through green lanes that were seldom disturbed except when the house of God was open. A little footpath was worn upon the verdant turf, and the green was unpressed elsewhere, save where some passive burden was silently borne to its lowly bed; there the somber wheels crushed down the blades that lifted up their heads to the glad sunlight, as if it were wrong to live and grow on while death was moving over them.
There were recent traces upon the grass that recalled to every mind the venerable and stricken old man who was now resting so peacefully beneath the church's shadow, and as Jennie's eye perceived them, she leaned heavily upon her uncle's arm and sighed.