"Don't, Henry," she said, laying her tiny hand upon his hair. "Maggie will comfort you when I am gone. She will talk to you of me, standing at my grave, for, Henry, you must not leave me here alone. You must carry me home and bury me in dear old Leominster, where my childhood was passed, and where I learned to love you so much—oh, so much!"
There was a mournful pathos in the tone with which the last words were uttered, but Henry Warner did not understand it, and covering the little blue-veined hand with kisses he promised that her grave should be made at the foot of the garden in their far-off home, where the sunlight fell softly and the moonbeams gently shone. That evening Henry sat alone by Rose, who had fallen into a disturbed slumber. For a time he took no notice of the disconnected words she uttered in her dreams, but when at last he heard the sound of his own name he drew near, and, bending low, listened with mingled emotions of joy, sorrow, and surprise to a secret which, waking, she would never have told him, above all others. She loved him,—the fair girl he called his sister,—but not as a sister loves; and now, as he stood by her, with the knowledge thrilling every nerve, he remembered many bygone scenes, when but for his blindness he would have seen how every pulsation of her heart throbbed alone for him whose hand was plighted to another, and that other no unworthy rival. Beautiful, very beautiful, was the shadowy form which at that moment seemed standing at his side, and his heart went out towards her as the one above all others to be his bride.
"Had I known it sooner," he thought, "known it before I met the peerless Maggie, I might have taken Rose to my bosom and loved her—it may be with a deeper love than that I feel for Maggie Miller, for Rose is everything to me. She has made and keeps me what I am, and how can I let her die when I have the power to save her?"
There was a movement upon the pillow. Rose was waking, and as her soft blue eyes unclosed and looked up in his face he wound his arms around her, kissing her lips as never before he had kissed her. She was not his sister now—the veil was torn away—a new feeling had been awakened, and as days and weeks went by there gradually crept in between him and Maggie Miller a new love—even a love for the fair-haired Rose, to whom he was kinder, if possible, than he had been before, though he seldom kissed her lips or caressed her in any way.
"It would be wrong," he said, "a wrong to myself—a wrong to her—and a wrong to Maggie Miller, to whom my troth is plighted;" and he did not wish it otherwise, he thought; though insensibly there came over him a wish that Maggie herself might weary of the engagement and seek to break it. Not that he loved her the less, he reasoned, but that he pitied Rose the more.
In this manner time passed on, until at last there came to him
Maggie's letter, which had been a long time on the sea.
"I expected it," he thought, as he finished reading it, and though conscious for a moment of a feeling of disappointment the letter brought him far more pleasure than pain.
Of Arthur Carrollton no mention had been made, but he readily guessed the truth; and thinking, "It is well," he laid the letter aside and went back to Rose, deciding to say nothing to her then. He would wait until his own feelings were more perfectly defined. So a week went by, and again, as he had often done before, he sat with her alone in the quiet night, watching her as she slept, and thinking how beautiful she was, with her golden hair shading her childish face, her long eyelashes resting on her cheek, and her little hands folded meekly upon her bosom.
"She is too beautiful to die," he murmured, pressing a kiss upon her lips.
This act awoke her, and, turning towards him she said, "Was I dreaming, Henry, or did you kiss me as you used to do?"