He was muffled in furs, and was looking thin and ill, and in the light of the moon the lines of his handsome face were marked as if carved in ivory.
"You and your old tutor have had a great many quarrels, and always made it up again; and now at last we part, I am sure, good friends."
"You are going, and you're ill," was all I could say; but I was conscious there was something of that wild tone that real sorrow gives in my voice.
"How often I have thought of you, Miss Ethel—how often I shall think of you, be my days many or few. How often!"
"I am so sorry, Mr. Carmel—so awfully sorry!" I repeated. I had not unclasped my hand; I was looking in his thin, pale, smiling face with the saddest augury.
"I want you to remember me; it is folly, I know, but it is a harmless folly; all human nature shares in it, and"—there was a little tremble, and a momentary interruption—"and your old tutor, the sage who lectured you so wisely, is, after all, no less a fool than the rest. Will you keep this little cross? It belonged to my mother, and is, by permission of my superiors, my own, so you may accept it with a clear conscience." He smiled. "If you wear it, or even let it lie on your table, it will sometimes"—the same momentary interruption occurred again—"it may perhaps remind you of one who took a deep interest in you."
It was a beautiful little gold cross, with five brilliants in it.
"And oh, Ethel! let me look at you once again."
He led me—it was only a step or two—out of the shadow of the tree into the bright moonlight, and, still holding my hand, looked at me intently for a little time with a smile, to me, the saddest that ever mortal face wore.
"And now, here she stands, my wayward, generous, clever Ethel! How proud I was of my pupil! The heart knoweth its own bitterness," he said gently. "And oh! in the day when our Redeemer makes up his jewels, may you be precious among them! I have seen you; farewell!"