"Good-bye," she said, kissing him eagerly. "Come again soon, my dear boy; and although Una Challoner loves you, do not forget your old nurse."
"Of course not," he replied gaily, and walked away humming an air. Patience Allerby waited till the door was closed and the sound of his voice had died away, then fell on her knees, beating her breast with her hands and weeping bitterly.
"God! God!" she cried, amid convulsive sobs, "pardon my sin. It was for his sake, for his dear sake, not for my own. Let the dead past be forgotten. Let him never know anything but what I have told him, and bless him, oh God, in his future life."
There was a crucifix of black ebony against the wall, and from it, with pitying eyes, looked down the face of the Lord at the stricken woman kneeling before him. The ineffable sorrow of the sacred face seemed to calm her spirit, for she ceased to weep and her lips moved in a prayer which seemed to come from her heart.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us."
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE BLIND ORGANIST.
"Naught have I seen of the earth, for mine eyes have been darkened
Since I was born to this life, with its toils and vexations,
Yet hath the Maker, in mercy, bestowed compensation,
Music, and love of sweet singing to lighten the burden.
Here, at the loud-swelling organ, my soul is responsive
To passion and grandeur of music, and sighings melodious,
It bursts from its prison of gloom, soaring upward rejoicing,
Borne on the stormy, majestical breath of the organ."
As a rule, the conversations of lovers are hardly worth recording, consisting, as they mostly do, of incoherent rhapsodies of love and devotion, with very little of that useful quality called common sense. But Reginald and Una were the most sedate of sweethearts, and talked of other things besides the ardour of their passion. In this instance they were discussing their future and the chances of their marriage.
It would have been difficult to find a handsomer pair as they walked along; she fair and slender, with a charming smile on her face; he tall and dark, with a touch of haughtiness in his manly dignity. They looked like two lovers who had strayed from the enchanted garden of Boccaccio, with nothing to talk about but the pains and passions of Eros, but, alas, such thoughts are impossible, save under the magic influence of twilight; and this youthful pair, who seemed the incarnation of romance, were talking in a most prosaic fashion.