Poor Edith! She threw out her hands with a smothered moan of despair, and the heavy cloak fell from her shoulders, revealing her exquisite dinner gown of white lace. Priceless pearls gleamed on her neck, and her wealth of golden ringlets fell around her in sad beauty as she bent over her lover.
“Edith, dear Edith, I am glad you have come in time,” he whispered, faintly. “Tell her, Uncle Jamie, before it is too late. But place her chair close by my side. Let me see her now all the while until the last.”
They obeyed his wish, and Edith sitting still, with her hand clasped in the weak one of her lover, listened to a story told in the quivering voice of the old man—a story of wrong and treachery to the dead and to the living—a wrong done to a brother’s orphan heir and repented of, alas! too late.
“I deserted the infant boy—put him in a foundling asylum without a name. His father had been a wealthy man, and I wanted the child’s fortune. So I announced that the little Douglas was dead, and there being no near relatives to inquire into its fate, my scheme succeeded well. My wife and I have enjoyed our ill-gotten gains for twenty-five years, but we always kept cognizant of my nephew’s whereabouts, meaning when we died to right the cruel wrong we had done to the orphan boy. Alas, alas!” moaned the old man in futile sorrow.
“Leave us now,” said the weak voice from the bed, and the old man moved away, leaving Edith alone by the side of the beloved one drifting away from her so swiftly out on the shoreless waters of Eternity.
She bent over him, brushing the dark curls back from his white brow, a world of love in her tender eyes.
The clasp of his hand tightened on hers, and he murmured:
“My darling, I have so much to tell you. They have told me such strange things to-day. Have you ever heard that strange tradition of the Chilton race—the Minstrel’s Curse?”
“Yes,” she sobbed. “But, my own dear love, I pray you forgive me the doom I have brought upon you. Never until yesterday, was I told that strange story—yesterday when it was all too late.”
Oh, the love and sorrow in the sad dark eyes looking into hers, they almost broke her heart.