“What shall I do with my life?” cried the mother despairingly; “what shall I do with all the days to come—now she is gone?”
She left those rooms at last, locking the doors behind her, and went out into the garden. The grand old cedars cast their broad shadows on the lawn. The rustic chairs and tables were there, as in the days gone by, when that velvet turf under the cedars had been Mrs. Greswold’s summer parlour. Would she sit there ever again? she wondered: could she endure to sit there without Lola?
There was a private way from the Manor gardens into the churchyard, a short cut to church by which mother and daughter had gone twice on every Sunday ever since Lola was old enough to know what Sunday meant. She went by this path in the evening stillness to visit Lola’s grave.
She gathered a few rosebuds as she went.
“Flowers for my blighted flower,” she murmured softly.
All was still and solemn in the old churchyard shadowed by sombre yews—a churchyard of irregular levels and moss-grown monuments enclosed by rusty iron railings, and humbler headstones of crumbling stone covered over with an orange-coloured lichen which was like vegetable rust.
The names on these were for the most part illegible, the lettering of a fashion that has passed away; but here and there a brand-new stone perked itself up among these old memorials with an assertive statement about the dead.
Lola’s grave was marked by a large white marble cross, carved in alto relievo on the level slab. The inscription was of the simplest:
“Laura, the only child of George and Mildred Greswold, aged twelve.”
There were no words of promise or of consolation upon the stone.