CHAPTER LXII.
"Weeping! dear Gertrude," exclaimed John, as he entered his sister's studio, and seated himself by her side.
Gertrude laid her head upon his shoulder without replying.
"You do not often see me thus," she said, after a pause. "To-day is the anniversary of my husband's death, and as I sat at the window and saw the autumn wind showering down the bright leaves, I thought of that mournful October day, when, turning despairingly away from his dying moans, I walked to the window of his sick room, and saw the leaves eddying past as they do now. I could almost see again before me that pallid face, almost hear those fleeting, spasmodic breaths, and all the old agony woke up again within me. And yet," said Gertrude, smiling through her tears, "such blissful memories of his love came with it! Oh! surely, John, love like this perishes not with its object—dies not in this world?
"And my little Arthur, too, John—you have never seen my treasures. You have never looked upon the faces which made earth such a paradise for me;" and touching a spring in a rosewood box near her, Gertrude drew from it the pictures of her husband and child, and as John scanned their features in silence, she leaned upon his shoulder, and the bright teardrops fell like rain upon them.
"It is seldom that I allow myself to look at them," she said. "I were unfitted else for life's duties."
"It is a fine face,", said John, gazing at that of Gertrude's husband. "It is a faithful index of the noble soul you worship. Your boy's face is yours in miniature, Gertrude."
"Yes; and I so deplored it after my husband's death; I used to watch so eagerly for one flitting expression of his father's."