"I remember," said he, musingly, "that I read of this incident, years ago, and was struck with it. But I should never have imagined that it concerned a collateral branch of my own ancestry. How singular! The Floyds immigrated to this country long after that time, and yet here am I, their representative, who have spent my life in this spot, so near where Gertrude Wylde disappeared from civilization—and I never knew of it!"
The discovery supplied them with a theme for meditation and remark, that lasted the rest of the evening.
Jessie bestirred herself, in the midst of a revery which had enveloped all three, after they had talked for some time, saying: "How much it's like the flowers! We're all one great family—at least, nearly one."
"Yes," echoed Lance, "nearly one!"
She blushed, and rose to say good-night.
After she had gone, the colonel came to Lance and, drawing his arm around him, said: "God bless you, my boy—and her. I see how it is, and I'm satisfied."
"So am I," said Lance; "except that no man is good enough for her."
What a night that was! Did ever darkness close round a pair more happy than Lance and Jessie? The great heavens seemed to Lance the only canopy that overhung his slumbers; for the thoughts and images that filled his dreaming brain rose beyond the barriers of roof and wall, and included a vast realm of peaceful joy, in which the stars burned ever mildly. He had taken a spray of the yellow jessamine with him to his room. He fancied that its fragrance repeated to him all night long, in untranslatable sweetness, the name so like its own and now so dear to him: "Jessie—Jessie—Jessie." And the knowledge that she was a late comer in the line of the woman whom his ancestor had loved, contributed still another element to his trance of silent rejoicing.
Yet, through the whole delicious maze of happiness, he was aware of a surmise which had not presented itself while he had been awake. It was this: since Jessie had the Wylde blood in her veins, and the woman whom he had met by the shore so strongly suggested a resemblance to Jessie, might there not be some hidden bond between them, dating from the lost Gertrude?