"Yes, signora," was the answer, "it's his mother's grave. The pretty English girl is buried here. I can recollect her well, with blue eyes and gold hair, and a skin like roses and lilies. He called her Sophy."
Margaret started. A sudden pang shot through her heart. After all these years was she to discover the fate of the poor girl, whose loss she had mourned so long, in this remote spot? Could this be Sophy Goldsmith's grave? And oh! how sorrowful beyond all their fears must her sad lot have been! Dying, alone, deserted; leaving behind her a child who had grown into this miserable pariah of the mountains. Swiftly the thought of Andrew Goldsmith, and his dark, deep grief when he learnt all, passed through her mind.
The refrain of the chant came nearer, and the long procession had reached the doors of the church close to the cemetery. Suddenly the peasant woman broke the silence with which she had respected Margaret's tears.
"Will the signora pardon me if I leave her?" she asked. "They are going into church now. God!" she cried in a tone of terror, "here is the young English signore himself! the signore who forsook the poor English girl. Oh, my God!"
Margaret turned round, with a sickening sensation of terror, such as she had never felt before, as if she would be compelled to see some dreaded vision. Coming slowly toward them down the weedy path of the cemetery was Philip, with Dorothy at his side. Both looked grave, as if they felt the desolation of the neglected spot; but there was an air of moody preoccupation about Philip, as though his thoughts were dealing with some subject a thousandfold more sad than the uncared-for dead.
"No, no," continued the woman, "it cannot be! The signore would be an old man now; it is thirty years ago. But just so he looked, and just so he walked. Did the signora know the poor girl who is buried here called Sophy, Martino's mother?"
"Hush! hush!" cried Margaret, in an agony of apprehension; "say nothing more now. This is my son. Go away to church, and I will see you again some time soon."
A moment afterward Philip was standing opposite to her, looking down on the rudely outlined grave and the rough cross. Neither of them spoke. He did not ask whose grave it was; and her parched lips could have given him no answer.
"It looks like a God-forsaken spot," said Dorothy, pityingly. "Oh, how can people leave their dear ones in such a desolate graveyard? I always fancy 'the field to bury strangers in,' which was bought with the money Judas flung away, must have been such a place as this."
But neither Margaret nor Philip answered her, and she looked up in surprise. Margaret's face was like that of one stunned and almost paralyzed by a sudden shock; her eyes were fixed, and her lips half open, as if she was gazing on some sight of horror. It was but for a brief half minute; then she sighed heavily, and tears fell fast and thick down her pale cheeks.