"We do not know; it was some worthy quarrel."
Again Miss Chressham was silent; she, like Selina, was ignorant how exactly my lord had met his death—a flare-up of temper, a wanton insult. Those who had seen him die had nothing more to say. No one knew why he was in the churchyard of St. Ann's at that hour. Susannah, who knew nothing of the flowers, guessed; Selina, who remembered them, did not.
"I never thought to see him again," continued Selina, with trembling lips; "but if it might have been I——"
"You must live to think of him," said Susannah tenderly. "Ah, my dear, he did not die wholly miserably if he left you behind to mourn him."
She rose and went on her knees beside Selina's low chair, and both were clasped tightly in each other's arms in an overwhelming impulse of sad affection.
Miss Chressham kissed the bowed, delicate head resting on her shoulder, saying in her soul: "She will never know, thank God! She will never know!" She herself, who did know the man for whom she grieved, she who had given all her love to one who did not ever hear of it, she who must guard her secret, uncomforted, to the end, could yet conceal her deeper anguish to soothe with her strong sympathy the woman who believed in her beloved.
"I think you must not weep for him," she said softly. "He lived his life. There were no better years before him than those that he had known. He died young and splendid; he did not have to face ruin, a fallen position; he had rich tastes and lordly habits; he did not have to feel the bitterness of inadequacy." And in her heart she added: He did not break the dream of a woman who truly loved him by selling himself a second time. He died while he was still, in one woman's eyes, all she would have had him. And for that Susannah Chressham was grateful.
"I do not weep for him," murmured Selina, "only I am tired."
She raised her head.
"Why should we mourn for him, Susannah? I do not think he could have wished to live."