For one moment he held her close to his heart, and gazed into the beautiful eyes where a world of love and suffering lay hidden; then imprinting a kiss upon her fair cheek fled from her presence. He was gone.
For a long time Lillian sat like one in a dream. Could it be? Had the friend of so many years really spoken the last farewell? How much she had prized his love; his demonstrations of tenderness; and now they were to be hers no more. How much it had cost her to sever this sparkling chain of gold which the heart of woman ever covets, God only knows. But the work had been accomplished at last, and the thought brought more of relief with it than pain after all. She had pondered it so long and shrank from its performance until the burden of her coming duty pressed heavily upon her; but it was lifted now, and a sense of peace stole into her mind as she realized the truth. Then there came a wave of apprehension that suddenly dashed its murky waters over her. "What would her mother say?" She had so long been the submissive child in her strength and power that it was a marvel how she had dared to loosen herself from them or act for once upon her own responsibility. There was one reason why that mother had so insisted upon her wedding George St. Clair, but the daughter had never been able to obtain it from her.
"But I could not—O I could not," she exclaimed, rising and standing in the door way of the arbor as she looked away down the road where her lover had ridden at full speed, taking with him, as she well knew, an aching heart, but one not more wretched than her own.
Raphael made the transfiguration a subject for his pencil, but died before it was finished, and how many of us will do the same? We begin life with glowing tints, but the sombre colors are demanded. We lay aside the brush as incapable of the task, and other hands interfere to spoil its designs or destroy the first intention altogether. Lillian's life had opened with a few glowing outlines, but a masterly hand had changed the subject, and the canvas was yet to receive its filling up, and God was marking the designs upon it for her; and, discovering this, she bowed her head with reverential awe before the solemn realization, and with a firmer and steadier step than had been hers for years, she walked to the house and entered her own room.
CHAPTER XII.
HEART'S SECRETS REVEALED AND UNREVEALED.
"He—he—he! Didn't Massa George make Spit-fire fly, tho'? Gorry! 'specks them bobolishenis 'll have to take it now, no 'stake. He—he—he!"