And this time no one saw her go. Like a hunted animal, she fled away among the trees, her gleaming many-hued dress trailing all wet and drabbled on the sodden earth behind her, and the darkness of the gathering night closed in around her, and covered her in mercy with its pitiful mantle.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
AT PEACE.
Open, dark grave, and take her:
Though we have loved her so,
Yet we must now forsake her:
Love will no more awake her:
Oh bitter woe!
Open thine arms and take her
To rest below!
A. Procter.
So Vera was at peace at last. The troubled life was over; the vexed question of her fate was settled for her. There was to be no more struggling of right against wrong, of expediency against truth, for her for evermore. She had all—nay, more than all she wanted now.
"It was what she desired herself," said the vicar, brokenly, as he knelt by the side of her who had been so dear and precious to him. "Only a Sunday or two ago she said to me 'If I could die, I should be at peace.'"
And Maurice, with hidden face at the foot of the bed, could not answer him for tears.
It was there, by that white still presence, that lay so calm and so lovely amongst the showers of heavy-scented waxen flowers, wherewith loving hands had decked her for her last long sleep; it was there that Eustace learnt at last the secret of her life, and the fatal love that had so wrecked her happiness. It was all clear to him now. Her struggles, her temptations, her pitiful moments of weakness and misery, her courageous strife against the hopelessness of her fate—all was made plain now: he understood her at last.