Even Clarice, who had been very angry with Laurel, and who had judged her hardly at first, had nothing but tears and regrets for the dead girl. Her passionate love that had ended in so sad a tragedy set her apart in solemn sacredness. She had atoned for her fault with her life.
"We must write to Mr. Le Roy," said Cyril Wentworth. "We must confess all our fault in sending Laurel to Eden. We must tell him how kind and true and sweet she was until her mad love led her astray. We must beg him to forgive her now that she is dead."
Beatrix wrote. It was a brave though most pathetic letter. She owned her fault in sending Laurel to Eden, she dwelt pathetically on her temptation to do so. She begged his pardon for her fault, and then she pleaded for Laurel dead as warmly and earnestly as if she had been living to profit by the prayers of her friend. The page was blistered by her tears, but no answer ever came to her earnest appeal. It seemed that Mr. Le Roy was indeed hard and unforgiving. He could not accord his pardon to any of the actors in the strange drama that had shadowed his life.
Then Beatrix wrote to her parents, humbly acknowledging her fault and praying their pardon. She loved them dearly although she had deserted them for her handsome, adoring young lover. She had a faint hope that they would forgive her and Cyril and bid them come home. She longed for her father's kiss of welcome, her mother's clasping arms.
Oh, how impatiently she waited for the answer to that letter! How eagerly she longed to be pardoned for the girlish conspiracy that had ended so disastrously to Laurel Vane! She began to see her fault in a darker light now since the tragedy at Eden. The shadow of Laurel's grave seemed to fall long and dark across her wedded happiness!
An answer came at last from her outraged father—such an answer as withered all the springing-hopes in her breast. They would never forgive her for her fault. They had no longer a daughter. Their Beatrix was the same as dead to them, and they wished never to hear from Cyril Wentworth's wife.
[CHAPTER XLVII.]
"I want that rose so much,
I would take the world back there to the night
When I saw it blush in the grass, to touch
It once in that fair fall light;
And only once if I might.
"Never any rose before
Was like that rose very well I know
Never another rose any more
Will blow as that rose did blow."