One of Mrs. Jordan’s letters enclosed a little note from William Henry, which for months Margaret could not bring herself to read. She knew that it required no reply, and must needs bruise the wound that had not yet healed within her; so it lay in her desk like some mystic jewel which its possessor keeps in her case because it brings ill-luck to the wearer. But when, after long waiting, and without importunity, Frank Dennis obtained permission to visit his own house, she felt it to be her duty to read or burn that note. It was not a case of being off with the old love before she was on with the new, so far as William Henry was concerned, for she had long done with him; but she was conscious of a certain tender curiosity, which, as circumstances were now turning out, might become disloyalty to another, and therefore she resolved to allay it.
She took the folded paper in her trembling hand, like one who takes up earth to scatter on the coffin lid; it was the very last sight she would ever have of aught belonging to him. There was a certain solemnity about those farewell words of his, even though they could not matter much. Perhaps they were not words of farewell; perhaps, in his wild, boyish fashion, they were about to tell her that in spite of his ruin and disgrace, he still loved her, and how, knowing that her heart had once been his, he defied her to cast him out of it. That would be cruel indeed, though it would not alter the course she had marked out for herself. Would it not be better after all to burn the letter?
The next moment she had torn it open and read it. It was dated months ago, within a week, indeed, of the discovery of his shame. ‘I have done you a grievous wrong, Margaret; let me now do you one good service. It is but a little word of advice, yet if you knew what it cost me to give it, you would hold it of some value. Frank Dennis is worth a thousand of me and loves you—I cannot bring myself to write with a truer love than mine, for that is impossible—but with a love more worthy of you. Marry him, Margaret, and forget me!’
It could not have mattered much, as has been said. The man was a bankrupt; but still he had given her all he had to give, a quittance.
With Aunt Margaret’s fortunes, as apart from the misguided youth who in so strange a manner had almost linked her lot with his, our story has little to do. My own impression is that she was a happy wife; and it is quite certain that Frank Dennis was the best of husbands. Mr. Erin did not long survive his day of humiliation, though it was not, I think, distress of mind that hastened his end so much (as often happens) as the relinquishment of his old pursuits and favourite studies. When we have ridden a hobby-horse all our lives, it is no wonder that when it is suddenly taken from us we find that we have lost the use of our legs.
Some embers of his old taste for antiquities must still, indeed, have glowed within him, for in those last days he wrote a ‘History of the Inns of Court,’ with New Inn among them; but it is plain his heart was not in it. Henceforth his favourite volume was a sealed book to him; there were two names—once so frequent on his tongue—to which he never alluded, William Henry Erin and William Shakespeare.
With respect to the former, Frank Dennis maintained a similar reticence for no less than five-and-twenty years. At the expiration of that time, Aunt Margaret received a certain letter, which she placed in her husband’s hands without a word.
‘Poor fellow!’ was his remark when he had read it. ‘Well! we must, of course, go up to town.’
William Henry had written from his sick bed to ask to see Margaret once more before he died.
They had lived in the country ever since their marriage, but they set out for London at once.