"VERA,
WIFE OF LESLIE NOBLE.
Aged Seventeen."
"It is such a falsehood I cannot bear to see it there," she says. "You must have the letters removed, Philip. I cannot bear to know that my name is carved upon a tombstone while I am so full of young, happy, bounding life."
"I think you are right, my darling," Colonel Lockhart answers, and he takes care to carry out her wish. The lying inscription is carefully erased from the white marble tablet.
"When I am really dead, Philip, I shall want some kind and loving words carved on the marble above my head," she says; "I shall want the world to know that I was loved and missed. How cold, how brief, how unloving was that inscription."
Then glancing into his face she sees it working with some deep emotion.
"Let us come away from this spot, Vera," he says, nervously. "I tremble to think that once you lay buried here beneath this springing turf. What if I had missed you from my life forever?"
"You would have married Miss Montgomery, doubtless," she answers, with a spice of mischief.
"Never," he answers, most emphatically, as he leads her away. "You were my fate, darling. If I had never met you I should never have loved nor married."
They remain in America several years. Lady Vera shrinks from returning home while the memory of her strange, romantic story is yet fresh in the public mind. But after awhile circumstances induce them to make England their home.
Colonel Lockhart having already left the army to please his wife, nothing remains but to set their faces toward England and Fairvale.