George Greswold went out to the lawn where he had sat on the Sunday evening before Lola’s death. It had been summer then, and it was summer now—the time of roses, before the song of the nightingale had ceased amidst the seclusion of twilit branches. He sat down upon the bench under the cedar, and gave himself up to his despair. He had tasted again the sweet cup of domestic peace—he had been gladdened again by the only companionship that had ever filled his heart, and now in the near future he saw the prospect of another parting, and this time without hope on earth. Once again he told himself that he was marked out by Fate.
“I suppose it must always be so,” he thought; “in the lots that fall from the urn there must be some that are all of one colour—black—black as night.”
Mildred came out to the lawn with him, followed by Kassandra, who had deserted the master for the mistress since her return, as if in a delight mixed with fear lest she should again depart.
“What has become of you, George? I thought you were coming back to the morning-room directly, and it is nearly an hour since Mr. Porter went away.”
“I came into the garden—to—to see your new shrubbery.”
“Did you really? how good of you! It is hardly to be called a new shrubbery—only a little addition to the old one. It will give an idea of distance when the shrubs are good enough to grow tall and thick. Will you come with me and tell me what you think of it?”
“Gladly, dear, if it will not tire you.”
“Tire me to walk to the shrubbery! No, I am not quite so bad as that, though I find I am a bad walker compared with what I used to be. I daresay I am out of training. I could walk any distance at Brighton last autumn. A long walk on the road to Rottingdean was my only distraction; but at Pallanza I began to flag, and the hotel people were always suggesting drives, so I got out of the habit of walking.”
He had his hand through her arm, and drew her near him as they sauntered across the lawn, with a hopeless wonder at the thought that she was here at his side, close to his heart, all in all to him to-day, and that the time might soon come when she would have melted out of his life as that fair daughter had done, when the grave under the tree should mean a double desolation, an everlasting despair.
“Is there any world where we shall be together again?” he asked himself. “What is immortality worth to me if it does not mean reunion? To go round upon the endless wheel of eternity, to be fixed into the universal life, to be a part of the Creator Himself! Nothing in a life to come can be gain to me if it do not give me back what I have lost.”