"God, when He puts a life-long sorrow on our hearts, usually compensates for it by giving us a brief span of life in which to endure it."
"He deserved to be happy," she answered, warmly. "He was so good, so true. If any merited perfect content, it was your son."
"You have seen him sometimes in the whirl of gay society, Grace; did you ever notice in him any peculiar attachment for a woman?"
"Never," Grace answered, wondering. "He was courteously polite, deferentially chivalrous to all, but seemed attached to none in particular. Why do you ask?"
"Because I found this—I would show it to none but you, Grace—on his poor dead heart. It tells its own sad story."
She put into the young girl's hand a broad, flat gold locket, swinging by a slight gold chain. Almost as if she touched a coffin-lid, Grace moved the spring.
It flew open. No woman's pictured face smiled back at her—the upper lid had a deeply cut inscription, February, 1871—in the other deeper side lay a dead white rose, its short, thorny stem wound about with a tangle of pale-gold hair.
That was all. A sudden memory stirred at Grace's heart, and it all came back to her. The winter morning in her conservatory at Norfolk—the white rose on her breast, the tangled, broken curl, the gentle good-by. Warm flushes of irrepressible color surged up to her pale face, and with a sudden shocked horror Mrs. Clendenon glanced from the stem of the withered rose to the soft curls she was mechanically smoothing.
It was enough. "My poor boy!" she murmured and taking Grace Winans in her tender, forgiving, motherly arms, kissed her forehead.