“So we went forth upon the bleak road, Edith, if, perchance, we could have reached the humble shelter of Ralph Dutton’s cottage; I knew we might be safe and secret there; but thy mother’s strength failed her, and in despair I sat me down at the gate of Thornleigh, while my Edith went to the door of her hard kinswoman, to crave a shelter for herself and thee. The lady then had a little one of her own—this good youth Philip—and I believed not but her heart would melt to the young mother and the child.
“Edith, she came forth in her pride to the threshold, where stood my gentle one, and with the keen wind cutting over that blessed face, and the weariness of her way-faring bending her to the earth, the door of her fathers’ house was shut upon her! In the extremity of our distress, yonder evil woman had naught but reproach to say to her! her own kindred, her own blood—the young mother with the infant in her weary arms!
“She came out to me again, Edith, I had waited to see that she was but safe, ere I went upon my lonely way, she came out to me with a smile upon her lip, such a smile! thou sawest never the like. ‘We will go on, Caleb,’ she said, ‘we will go on!’ that was all. Edith, I was nigh maddened! I saw the cold striking into her heart, I saw her totter as she laid her hand upon my arm, and I—I could do naught, my soul was mad within me: I could scarce speak comfort to her.
“And we went on—how, I dare not try to think; yet we did toil up yonder hills, thou wailing on her bosom, and I carrying ye both in my arms—a dreadful journey! God save thee, Edith, from ever such agony as thou hadst an unconscious part in then!
“We reached our shelter at last, when the gloom of night was on the hills, the bleak, chill gloom of night; and then, Edith, I tried to hope. God help me! I looked upon her face as she lay yonder, and tried to hope. But she had only come there in time to die! Edith—Edith! it was thus thy mother died!”
He could not go on; the strong man’s voice was choked—his breast heaved convulsively, and again he hid his face in his hands.
Edith was weeping silently by his side; the time passed by unnoted; he knew not how it went, until he looked up again when the twilight shadows were stealing through the room, and saw Sir Philip Dacre standing by his daughter’s side.
The young man was very grave. He looked wistfully into the Puritan’s face, “She is dead.”
Yes, in bitterer agony than that which carried the gentle Edith Dacre away from sin and oppression, into the holy peace of heaven—in deadly remorse and dreary hopelessness, rejecting the name of Him whose mercy she had spurned, and whose servants she had wronged, the haughty spirit of the Lady of Thornleigh had gone forth unrepentant and defiant to its doom.
The Puritan did not speak.