“What do you think of this handwriting?” Van Hupfeldt asked of his she-attendant, showing her the note. “Do you think you could imitate it?”
“It is big and bold enough; it doesn’t look difficult to imitate,” was the critical estimate.
“Just have a try, and let me see your skill. Write—”
He dictated to her the words: “Miss Mordaunt has duly received from her fiancé, Mr. Van Hupfeldt, the certificates of which Mr. Harcourt spoke to her, so that all necessity for any communication between Mr. Harcourt and Miss Mordaunt is now at an end. Miss Mordaunt leaves London to-day.”
The scribe, after several rewritings, at last shaped the note into something really like Violet’s writing. It was then directed to “David Harcourt.” The young woman took it to the grave, and it was placed on the wreath of violets where the purloined note had lain.
Twenty minutes later, David, full of anticipation and hope, the diary in his hand, drew near to Kensal Green. For some time he did not go quite to the grave, but stood at the bend of the path, whence he should be able to see her feet coming, and the blooming beneath them of the March daisies in the turf. But she did not come. The minutes went draggingly by. Strolling presently nearer the grave, he noticed the fresh wreath, and the letter laid on it.
He stood a long while by the Iona cross over the violets, while the dusk deepened to a gloom like that of his mind. How empty seemed London now! And all life, how scantless and stale now, without the purple and perfume of her! For she was gone, and “all necessity for any communication between her and him was now at an end.” He went away from the cemetery whistling a tune, with a jaunty step, in order to persuade himself that his heart was not hollow, nor his mind black with care.