“And she, Jack, will break her heart that she cannot marry you. That is what I came to tell you, Hush, Jack, hush! I know all you would say; but you do not understand women, and least of all do you understand Gerty. I do, Jack; yes, I do.”
“Sissy,” said the young man earnestly, “the cruellest thing mortals can be guilty of is to arouse the dying to feeling again, when the bitterness of death is almost past. You would not be so unkind. You did not come here to raise hopes in my heart that would be as certainly doomed to disappointment as that blooming flowers shall fade.”
“No, Jack, no. I only came because I wanted to pour balm, not hope, into your bleeding heart. I came to tell you all Gerty Keane’s story, that you may not think the very, very worst of her. Listen, Jack.”
The young man sat in silence for quite a long time after his sister had finished the story of Gerty Keane, and of her fondness for her lonesome, friendless, and unlovable father; sat gazing out upon the moonlit landscape, but seeing nothing; sat while the nightingale’s lilt, plaintive and low or mournfully sweet, bubbled tremulously from the grove, but hearing nothing. And in the shadow of the old-fashioned arm-chair snuggled Flora, her eyes resting lovingly, wistfully on her brother’s sad but handsome face.
At last he sighed and turned towards her. “Flora,” he said, “I’m going to try to forgive Gerty. I’m going to live in hope I one day may be able to forgive. Just tell her from me I wish her that happiness with another which fate has decreed it shall never be my joy to impart. Tell her—but there! no more, Flora, no more.”
“Spoken like my own brother; spoken like a true and brave Mackenzie. Kiss me, Jack. I’m glad I came.”
He held her hand a moment there, the moonbeams shining on both. “But, Flora,” he said, “you too have a little story.”
“Ye—es, Jack.”
Her head drooped like a lily.
“And, siss, it—is connected with—don’t tremble so, Flora—with Tom?”