Lady Emily knew from experience that when her husband’s mind was made up, it was useless to argue with him, so she said no more, but thought within herself that when her time came to die, she would request that her aristocratic flesh be laid in Greenwood beside the Rossiters, and not on Schuyler Hill, in that little yard where a few gray, time-worn stones marked the last resting-place of such of the Schuylers as were buried there, and where Abelard Lyle was to be taken. Colonel Schuyler was in one sense as proud as his wife, but with his pride he had much good sense and genuine kindness of heart. But for Abelard Lyle he would have lost his bright-faced boy, and he felt truly grateful to the young man, and resolved to show him every possible respect. So he ordered the funeral himself, and sent to the cottage a handsome rosewood coffin, and was in and out several times to see that all was right, and when the hour for the services arrived, drove down with his wife and son, and enacted the part of chief, and, indeed, only mourner, for Abelard had no relatives, and Mrs. Fordham was too much afraid of being identified with “that class of people” to admit of any great manifestation of feeling on her part. For the sake of the mother country, and because he had been kind to her on the ship, she had allowed the body to be brought to her house, but she managed to impress every one with the great distance there was between herself and the dead man, who looked so calm and peaceful, and handsome in his elegant coffin, with a half-opened rose upon his breast. Mrs. Fordham had put it there at Heloise’s request; but Heloise herself had taken no part in anything, or even seen the body. She had abandoned the idea of going to the grave and startling the people with her story, as she had meant to do the previous day. The pain in her head was too great to admit of her sitting up, and during the entire day she never once appeared below, but lay on the bed in her chamber, with her aching head buried in the pillow, and the faded, blood-stained rose hidden away in her bosom. She heard the people as they assembled in the house and yard below, and knew when the Schuylers came by the suppressed hush among the crowd. She heard, too, the clergyman’s voice as he read the burial service, and when they carried the body out she arose from her bed and through the half-closed shutters watched the funeral procession as it moved up the road, to the top of Schuyler Hill, where the open grave was waiting for all that was mortal of Abelard Lyle. Heloise could not pray then, her heart was so hard and rebellious, and ached so with a sense of actual pain, and loss, and a horrid fear of what might be in the future; and once when this fear got the mastery of her she arose, and going to her private drawer, where she kept her hidden treasures, took from it a box, in which she sought for and found, as she supposed, the instrument which was to help her in the hour of need, when she told the world what she must ere long tell. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and felt herself grow cold and faint, when she saw that instead of the article which was to prove her innocent and pure, she held only a receipt for goods bought and paid for by her mother in New York. Search as she might, she could not find the document she sought. That was gone, how or where she could not guess until she remembered having burned some waste papers accumulating in her drawer, only a few days before. She had it then and read it over, and supposed she laid it back in the box where she always kept it, but she must have put in its place the receipt which was folded and looked much like it, and burned the only evidence she had that she was not the wicked thing she felt herself to be as she sank upon the floor and wished that she could die. It was terrible to see such grief in one so young, for Heloise, though well grown and tall, was little more than fifteen, and her face when in repose was the face of a child. But it seemed old now, and gray, and pinched with that look of anguish upon it, mingled with something akin to shame, as she crouched upon the floor and whispered to herself:
“What if mother and the world do not believe me?” Then swift as thought the answer came: “I’ll drown myself in the river;” and sitting upright upon the floor, the young girl went through in fancy with all the sickening details which such a catastrophe would involve. The anxiety of the mother, the alarm, the search for her body, the finding it at last, and the coroner’s inquest, where possibly her secret would be discovered and she be disgraced all the same.
“No, no,” she moaned, “better live and fight it out, knowing I am innocent, than carry a sullied name to a suicide’s grave.”
“And lose your soul,” something whispered in her ear, making her start with a new horror as she remembered the hereafter she had in her madness almost forgotten.
Falling upon her knees, she sobbed, “Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.”
That was all she could say, but Jesus knew what she meant,—knew that she wanted help, and He helped her as He always does when asked aright, and her heart ceased to throb so painfully, and the hard look left her face, and the tears came to her relief as she said:
“I know I am innocent, and so does God; and I’ll tell mother the truth, keeping nothing back.”
Heloise had risen now, and with trembling hands was binding up her beautiful hair of golden brown, which Abelard had admired so much, and which she, too, knew was wonderful for its brightness and luxuriance. Would she ever care for it again? she asked herself, as she put it away under a net where not even a single curl could find its way to neck or brow, when suddenly, as if it had been a vision, she saw an elegant room which seemed to be at Schuyler Hill, and in that room a lady of marvellous beauty, with a face like her own, save that it was older and more mature,—a lady, clad in satin and lace, with jewels in her flowing hair and on her snowy neck, and to herself she said:
“That’s I. How came I there?”
Then the mist, if mist it was, which had for a moment clouded her mind, lifted, and she was herself again,—Heloise Fordham, standing in her own humble room and making herself ready for the meeting with her mother, and the confession she meant to make before she slept again.