And now a gentle hand is laid upon her head. She turns and sees Emily, whom she believed to be asleep, but from whom anxiety and the sobs of Gertrude banished slumber, is standing by her side.
"Gertrude," said she, "are you in trouble, and did you seek to hide it from me? Do not turn from me, Gertrude!" and, throwing her arms around her, she drew her head close to her bosom, and whispered, "Tell me all, my darling! What is the matter with my poor child?"
And Gertrude unburdened her heart to Emily, disclosing to her the only secret she had ever kept from her; and Emily wept as she listened, and when Gertrude had finished she pressed her again and again to her heart, exclaiming with an excitement which Gertrude had never before witnessed in the usually placid blind girl, "Strange, strange, that you, too, should be thus doomed! Oh, Gertrude, my darling, we may well weep together; but still, believe me, your sorrow is less bitter than mine!"
And then in the darkness of that midnight hour was Gertrude's confidence rewarded by the revelation of that tale of grief and woe which twenty years before had blighted Emily's youth, and which was still vivid to her recollection casting over her life a dark shadow, of which her blindness was but a single feature.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
A TALE OF SORROW.
"I was younger than you, Gertrude," said she, "when my trial came, and hardly the same person in any respect that I have been since you first knew me. My mother died when I was too young to retain any recollection of her; but my father soon married again, and in that step-parent I found a love and care which fully compensated my loss. I can recall her now as she looked towards the latter part of her life—a tall, delicate, feeble woman, with a very sweet face. She was a widow when my father married her, and had one son, who became my sole companion, the partner of all my youthful pleasures. You told me, many years ago, that I could not imagine how much you loved Willie, and I then had nearly confided to you my early history, and to convince you that my own experience taught me how to understand such a love; but I checked myself, for you were too young then to know so sad a story as mine. How dear my young playmate became to me no words can express. The office which each filled, the influence which each of us exerted upon the other, created mutual dependence; for though his was the leading spirit, the strong and determined will, and I was ever submissive to a rule which to my easily influenced nature was never irksome, there was one respect in which my bold young protector and ruler ever looked to me for aid. It was to act as mediator between him and my father; for while the boy was almost an idol to his mother, he was ever treated with coldness and distrust by my father, who never appreciated his noble qualities, but seemed always to regard him with dislike.
"That my father's sternness towards her son was distressing to our mother I doubt not; for I remember the anxiety with which she strove to conceal his faults and the frequent occasions on which she instructed me to propitiate the parent, who, for my sake, would often forgive the boy, whose adventurous disposition was continually bringing him into collision with one of whose severity, when displeased, you can judge. My step-mother had been poor in her widowhood, and her child having inherited nothing which he could call his own, was wholly dependent upon my father's bounty. This was a stinging cause of mortification to the pride of which even as a boy he had an unusual share; and often have I seen him irritated at the reception of favours which he well understood were far from being awarded by a paternal hand.
"While our mother was spared to us we lived in comparative harmony, but when I was sixteen years old she suddenly died. Well do I remember the last night of her life, her calling me to her bedside and saying, 'Emily, my dying prayer is that you will be a guardian angel to my boy!' God forgive me," ejaculated the tearful blind girl, "if I have been faithless in the trust!