"Hurrah! Now art thou thine old self once more, as I saw thee on the morning when I was Lord of—"
Margaret saw the gayety fade out of Elinor's face as swiftly as a sunlighted sail is swallowed up by the gray mist.
"Dost thou mind, Elinor," she said, quickly, "how we were wont to make merry on Candlemas Eve at home in England?"
"Ay, right well I remember how once, when I was a girl, I went through the woods gathering wax berries for the candles." Here she paused, and added softly, with a mounting flush and a tender smile, "'Twas with Christopher Neville."
Margaret Brent looked up astonished.
"Yes, Cousin, I can speak his name, and mean to talk often of him with Cecil, to make the boy, so far as I can, in his image, so tender and true, so steadfast and faithful to death."
"Thou art a brave woman."
"Nay, I have been till now a very foolish one. Even now, as thou didst see, Cecil's words and all they called up cut to the quick like a two-edged knife; but this is wrong, and I know it. Sure, God did not give us memory to be a curse, but a joy. So far as I sinned toward Christopher I must bear the burden of sorrow; but I mean not that it shall blight all the past. We were happy together once—then sorrow swept between; but now that too has passed, and I am fain to live once again, though alone, the happiness we shared."
"Art sure it will not try thine endurance too far to dwell so on the past?"
"Nay, for I love it, and 'tis so real,—far, far more real than the present. Why, I can smell again the fragrance of the waxen berries, and I can see Christopher as he stood pulling down the bushes and smiling at my eagerness to fill my pail. I think there never was a smile quite like his. 'Twas more in the eyes than the lips, and it seemed to have actual warmth in it, like the fire yonder."