He went back to the house, leaving Mary sitting on the rustic bench under the fine old copper beech, a tree that had been standing long before Lady Maulevrier enlarged the old stone house into a stately villa. He returned in a few minutes, bringing a morocco bag about the size of those usually carried by lawyers or lawyers' clerks.
'I don't think I have given you anything since we were engaged, Mary,' he said, as he seated himself by her side.
Mary blushed, remembering how Clara, the maid, had remarked upon this fact.
'You gave me my ring,' she said, looking down at the massive band of gold, 'and you have given me ever so many delightful books.'
'Those were very humble gifts, Molly: but to-day I have brought you a wedding present.'
He opened the bag and took out a red morocco case, and then half-a-dozen more red morocco cases of various shapes and sizes. The first looked new, but the others were old-fashioned and passing shabby, as if they had been knocking about brokers' shops for the last quarter of a century.
'There is my wedding gift, Mary,' he said, handing her the new case.
It contained an exquisitely painted miniature of a very beautiful woman, in a large oval locket set with sapphires.
'You have asked me for my portrait, dearest,' he said. 'I give you my mother's rather than my own, because I loved her as I never thought to love again, till I knew you. I should like you to wear that locket sometimes, Mary, as a kind of link between the love of the past and the love of the present. Were my mother living, she would welcome and cherish my bride and my wife. She is dead, and you and she can never meet on earth: but I should like you to be familiar with the face which was once the light of my life.'
Mary's eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the face in the miniature. It was the portrait of a woman of about thirty—a face of exquisite refinement, of calm and pensive beauty.