"If you had not, I could never have been happy again, and even now, I still feel the shame of it. Are you going to wear that—veil—always?"
"No," she whispered, shrinking back into the shelter of it, "but I am waiting for a sign."
"May it soon come," said Ralph, earnestly.
"I am used to waiting. My life has been made up of waiting. God bless you," she concluded, impulsively.
"And you," he answered, touching his lips to her hand. He started away, but she held him back. "Ralph," she said, passionately, "be true to her, be good to her, and never let her doubt you. Teach her to trust you, and make yourself worthy of her trust. Never break a promise made to her, though it cost you everything else you have in the world. I am old, and I know that, at the end, nothing counts for an instant beside the love of two. Remember that keeping faith with her is keeping faith with God!"
"I will," returned Ralph, his voice low and uneven. "It is what my own mother would have said to me had she been alive to-day. I thank you."
The house was very lonely after they had gone, though the echoes of love and laughter seemed to have come back to a place where they once held full sway. The afternoon wore to its longest shadows and the dense shade of the cypress was thrown upon the garden. Evelina smiled to herself, for it was only a shadow.
The mignonette breathed fragrance into the dusk. Scent of lavender and rosemary filled the stillness with balm. Drowsy birds chirped sleepily in their swaying nests, and the fairy folk of field and meadow set up a whirr of melodious wings. White, ghostly moths fluttered, cloud-like, over the quiet garden, and here and there a tiny lamp-bearer starred the night. A flaming meteor sped across the uncharted dark of the heavens, where only the love-star shone. The moon had not yet risen.
From within, Evelina recognised the sturdy figure of Piper Tom, and went out to meet him as he approached. She had drawn down her veil, but her heart was strangely glad.
"Shall we sit in the garden?" she asked.