“Just as I am to let you see how much I love you,” Mildred said, as she laid her beautiful head upon his arm, and told him of the rumor of his engagement to Bessie, which had been the means of making her Mrs. Thornton.
“That was the only secret I had from my husband,” she said. “I told him everything else, and he took me knowing it all, and I believe he loved me, too. He was very kind to me,—and——”
She meant to be loyal to her husband, and would have said more, if Hugh had not stopped her mouth in a most effective way. No man cares to hear the woman who has just promised to marry him talk about her dead husband, and Hugh was not an exception.
“Yes, darling, I know,” he said. “But let’s bury the past. You are mine now; all mine.”
Hugh might be awkward and shy in many things, but he was not at all shy or awkward in love-making when once the ice was broken. He had waited for Mildred seventeen years, and he meant to make the most of her now, and he stayed so long that she at last bade him go, and pointed to the clock just striking the hour of midnight.
No one seemed surprised when told of the engagement. It was what everybody expected, and what should have been long ago, and what would have been, if Mildred had staid at home, instead of going off to Europe. Congratulations came from every quarter and none were more sincere than those from the young people at the Park, who wanted to make a grand wedding. To this Hugh did not object, for in his heart was the shadow of a wish to see Mildred again as he saw her that night at the party in jewels and satins and lace. But she vetoed it at once. A widow had no business with orange blossoms, she said, and besides that she was too old, and Hugh was old, too, and she should be married quietly in church, in a plain gray traveling dress and bonnet. And she was married thus on a lovely morning in June, when the roses were in full bloom, and the church was full of flowers, and people, too,—for everybody was there to see the bride, who went in Mildred Thornton and came out Mildred McGregor.
And now there is little more to tell. It is three years since that wedding day, and Hugh and Mildred live in the red farm house, which is scarcely a farm house now, it has been so enlarged and changed, with its pointed roofs and bow windows and balconies. Brook Cottage they call it, and across the brook in the rear there is a rustic bridge leading to the meadow, where Mr. Leach’s cows used to feed, but which now is a garden, or pleasure ground, not so large, but quite as pretty as the Park, and every fine afternoon at the hour when Hugh is expected from his office, Mildred walks through the grounds, leading by the hand a little golden-haired boy, whom she calls Charlie for the baby brother who died and whom he greatly resembles. And when at last Hugh comes, the three go back together, Hugh’s arm around Milly’s waist and his boy upon his shoulder. They are not rich and never will be, but they are very happy in each other’s love, and no shadow, however small, ever rests on Milly’s still lovely face, save when she recalls the mad ambition and discontent which came so near wrecking her life.
In the Park three children play, Giles and Fanny, who belong to the Thorntons, and a second Mildred Leach, who belongs to Tom and Alice.
One picture more, and then we leave them forever near the spot where we first saw them. Gerard and Bessie,—Alice and Tom,—have come to the cottage at the close of a warm July afternoon, and are grouped around the door, where Mildred sits, with the sunlight falling on her hair, a bunch of sweet peas pinned upon her bosom, and the light of a great joy in her eyes as she watches Hugh swinging the four children in a hammock, and says to Bessie “I never thought I could be as happy as I am now. God has been very good to me.”
THE END.