She had met the man who had gained her heart—her first love, her soul’s idolatry.
He was not the man she had pictured. She had never sketched out such a figure, such a face as Mark possessed. She had never, indeed, created a model. She had hoped only for a manly loving heart, and Mark presented himself, carrying off her affection by a coup de main, without any of those considerations she had deemed essential to love being consulted in the matter.
Oh, she loved him truly, dearly, faithfully, and with the most pure unselfishness. No greater happiness could she conceive than being his wife. Yet to her clear mind there were duties superior to her deep affection, and she bent to them. She swerved not from them, even though her heart broke in the task.
The night that Mark went away she prayed for his happiness with earnest sincerity, and though she might never, never see him more, and her future life be thus made sad and cheerless, she sent up an entreaty that their separation might never sit heavy on his heart.
A week had passed away. She was pale, and a dull settled expression had fastened itself upon her once lively, intelligent open face. She had not seen her brother Charley since Mark’s departure, and her only solace had been Helen Grahame’s child.
She had hitherto loved it—now she doated upon it. It seemed all that she had left to love, and to love her; for that the child was most fondly attached to her there could be no doubt. She had had him christened by the name of Hugh Riversdale Grahame, and she had stood as godmother to him, resolving to fulfill firmly, faithfully, and justly that sacred responsibility in the absence of his own mother, of whom, since the night she left her so strangely, she had nothing heard.
One morning she was seated alone; she had laid the little Hugh down in his tiny bed for his morning’s sleep, and she was bending over her work with her accustomed close application. She thought of Mark; it was not possible to keep down thoughts of him. He never would come back to her—there seemed little doubt of that. How, indeed, she hardly hoped for it, hardly wished for it; for, despite her adoration of him—-it was no less—she seemed to feel acutely disparity of their positions, and that it would have proved an effectual barrier to their peace if united. She thought of his parting words, and her eyes filled with tears. He would not bid her adieu—he felt their parting so deeply—yes, he loved her; she was sure of that, and an involuntary “God bless him,” escaped her lips as her head sank upon her bosom, and the fast falling tears bedewed the work in her trembling hands.
“Sweet! sweet! sweet!” chirruped the little canary.
“Dear little dick!” she thought, as the bird’s rapidly repeated call attracted her attention, “the little darling sees that I am sad and would comfort me.”
She raised her eyes, and, lo, a woman stood before her.