He remembered how her heart had throbbed against his own, how she had trembled with exquisite joy.
What bright hopes they had cherished! What dreams they had dreamed of wedded bliss! Dreams that faded so soon, for, torn apart from each other, his own heart was breaking, and Violet was dying.
Alone beside the mystic river, whose low voice seemed to be singing her dirge, he watched with anguished eyes the dimly lighted window of the room where his beautiful young love lay dying.
In his tortured brain throbbed echoes of sad verses somewhere read——
“From the altar a myriad tapers down shone,
But they fell on a face and a bosom like stone;
They gleamed in the hair,
But no bride vail was there—
Their quaver and glow could not wake her, my Clare!
“The organ wept softly a wail for the dead,