“I should rather say she has carried a prophecy in her heart all these long months,” said Hope, “of which that on her finger is only the symbol.”
“However it may be,” said Hester, “it has prepared a reception for Mr Enderby. There is no resisting a prophecy. What is written is written.”
“I must hear him, you know,” said Margaret, gently.
“You must; and you must hear him favourably,” said her brother.
“I had forgotten,” said Hester, ringing the bell. “Morris, a good fire in the breakfast-room, immediately.”
Within the hour, Philip and Margaret were by that fireside, finally wedded in heart and soul. It was astonishing how little explanation was needed when Margaret had once been told, in addition to the fact of her letter having been destroyed, that she was declared to have made Mrs Enderby the depository of her confidence about a prior attachment. There was, however, as much to relate as there was little to explain. How Enderby’s heart burned within him, when, in sporting with the idea of a prior attachment, it came out what Margaret had felt at the moment of his intrusion upon the conference with Hope, of which he had since, as at the time, been so jealous! the amusement on her own part, and the joy on Hester’s, which she was trying to conceal by her downcast looks! How his soul melted within him when she owned her momentary regret at being saved from under the ice, and the consolation and stimulus she had derived from her brother’s expression of affection for her on the spot! How clear, how true a refutation were these revealings of the imputations that had been cast upon her! and how strangely had the facts been distorted by a prejudiced imagination! How sweet in the telling was the story of the ring, so sad in the experience! and the recountings of the times that they had seen each other of late. Philip had caught more glimpses than she. He came down—he dared not say to watch over her in this time of sickness—but because he could not stay away when he heard of the condition of Deerbrook. But for this sickness would they have met—should they ever have understood each other again? This was a speculation on which they could not dwell—it led them too near the verge of the grave which was yawning for Matilda. Mrs Rowland would have been relieved, but the relief would have been not unmixed with humiliation, if she could have known how easily she was let off in this long conference. Not only can the happy easily forgive, but they are exceedingly apt to forget the causes and the history of their woes; and the wretched lady who, in the midst of her grief and terror for her child, trembled at home at the image of the lovers she had injured, was, to those lovers in their happiness, much as if she had never existed.
“Mrs Howell!” said Margaret, hearing her sister mention their departed neighbour, after Philip was gone. “Is it possible that it was this very afternoon that I saw that poor woman die?”
“Even so, dear. How many days, or months, or years, have you lived since? A whole age of bliss, Margaret!”
Margaret’s blush said “Yes.”