“Your wife, Mr. Howell? Were you then married when you went away?”
“Yes,” he answered; “and the concealment of it is one of my boyhood’s errors which I regret. I married Hetty without my father’s knowledge and against his wishes. He knew I loved her, and for that he turned her from his door and bade me forget her. But I did not. With the help of a college friend I went with her over the Bay State line into New York, where we were soon made one. After a week or so she came to Dresden, where her grandmother lived, while I returned to college. I saw her as often as possible after that, until at last——” here he paused, and seemed to be thinking of something far back in the past; then he suddenly added, “she sickened and died, and I buried her here.”
“And did you not tell your father?” asked Mildred.
“No, not then,” he answered; “but I told him on the night I went away, and it was for this he cursed me.”
There were tears in his eyes, and they came also to Mildred’s, as she thought of poor Hetty, and how much she must have loved her handsome boy-husband. Insensibly, too, there crept over her a strange affection for that grassy mound, as if it covered something which she had known and loved.
“There are no flowers here,” she said, wishing to break the painful silence; and when Richard answered, sadly, “There has been no one to plant them,” she continued, “I shall remain in Dresden some time, perhaps, and I will put some rose trees here and cover the sods with moss.”
“Heaven bless you, Miss Hawley,” and in that silent graveyard, standing by Hetty Kirby’s grave, Richard Howell took the hand of Mildred and pressed it to his lips,—modestly, gently, as if he had been her father.
“Tome, pa. Less doe,” Edith had said a dozen times, and yielding to her importunities, Mr. Howell now walked slowly away, but Mildred lingered still, chained to the spot by a nameless fascination.
“Tome, Minnie,—tome,” called Edith, and roused thus from her reverie of the unknown Hetty Kirby, Mildred followed on to the carriage, where Mr. Howell was waiting for her.
Down the hill, up another, round a curve, over a stream of water and down the second long, steep hill they went, and then they stopped again, but this time at a deserted old brown building, whose slanting roof had partially tumbled in, and whose doors were open to the weather, being destitute of latch or bolt. Through a gate half off the hinges they went, and going up a grass-grown path, they passed into a narrow entry, and then into a side room, where the western sun came pouring in. Here Mr. Howell stopped, and with his hand upon his forehead, stood leaning against the window, while the great tears dropped through his fingers and fell upon the old oak floor. Mildred saw all this, and needed nothing more to tell her that they stood in the room where Hetty Kirby died.