“I do not quite like her expression, and she looks too old for you.”
“Good! I’ll tell her that some time when she is nagging me unmercifully,” Godfrey said, adding: “I had a letter from Jule too, with her photograph, and also one of our house and grounds. This is Julia.”
It was the face of a brunette, dark, handsome, but proud and imperious, and I was glad that she was not to be my step-daughter.
“Jule is handsome, except her ears, which are as big as a palm-leaf fan,” Godfrey said, and I replied:
“Yes, she is handsome, and will make a brilliant woman.”
“This is our home,” he continued, and he put into my hand a large photograph of the house on Schuyler Hill, and a considerable portion of the grounds.
There were the tops of the evergreens, and there was a white stone shining through the green, and I said to Godfrey,
“Whose monument is that?”
“That? Let me see. Why, that is young Lyle’s, the man who saved my life. You remember I told you about him? Mother’s is farther on and out of sight.”
How faint and sick I felt to have Abelard’s grave thus brought near to me, and there was a blur before my eyes, which, for a moment, prevented me from seeing distinctly. Then it cleared away, and I was able to examine the picture and see how the grounds had been improved since that morning when Abelard’s blood was on the grass where now the flowers were growing. It was a fine place, and as I looked at it and thought it had been offered me, ay, might yet be mine, if I would take it, did I feel any regret for having refused it? None whatever. If I were to tell Col. Schuyler everything I should never go there, and if I were to go without telling him my life would be one of wretchedness and hatred of myself. No, better bear with poverty and servitude than live a greater lie than I am living now. So I gave the picture back to Godfrey, and bidding him good-night, came up to my room, where I could be alone, to think over the events of that eventful day.