“Yes,” he said. “You shall see the label. There is a date.”
He drew his chair near to the couch, so that he could reach her hands with his own. He took the label from his pocket-book, and laid it upon her lap. She lifted it and, bending toward him, read it by the firelight.
RETURNED EMPTY
September 12th, 1883.
“Oh, Nigel,” she said, “the day—the very day!”
“I know,” he answered. “I was listening for it as you talked. I felt it would come.”
“And it is to-day,” she said. “To-day! This is your thirtieth birthday.”
He looked at her with a wistful smile; a smile of such pathetic melancholy that it chilled her heart.
“It is,” he said. “And nobody in the whole world knows it, save you and I.”
She stretched out her hands.