When they came out of the church he was strong enough to meet them and speak to them.
They were glad and surprised in a breath. They asked him if he was married yet, and if Violet was with him.
"No, I am not married yet, and my sister is dead," he answered sadly, and then he showed them her grave. It was right in the churchyard there, and just a little way from the path.
The low, green mound was covered with white and blue violets, and there was a broken marble shaft at the head, twined about with passion flowers.
"She has been dead six months," he said, tremulously, and then he saw the husband and wife look at each other with a shade of remorse and pain in their speaking eyes.
"She had quite gotten over her trouble," he said, quickly. "She seemed perfectly well and happy. She talked of you, Ronald, and you, Mrs. Valchester, kindly and often. But she inherited her mother's disease. She died very suddenly and painlessly one evening while sitting in her chair and watching a beautiful sunset."
Jaquelina shed some quiet and sorrowful tears over Violet's early doom. They were the first tears that had dimmed her lovely eyes since she had married Ronald Valchester. He made her very happy.
In the beautiful, calm years of wedded happiness that flowed serenely over their future lives, the few years of passionate sorrow she had known were forgotten wholly, or remembered only as a haunting dream.