"Don't call me that name here. Do you not see where you stand?"
She glanced at the headstones engraved with initials and dates, and at once understood it all. For a long time she was silent, a long time I mean for her; and her soft eyes glistened at once with awe and pity. At last, she crept close to me, looked at the ground, and whispered with a deep sigh:
"How you must hate me, Clara."
"Hate you, my darling! What for?"
"Oh, because I have got such a dear Papa, and you have none at all. And much worse than that, because--because--oh, I don't know how to tell you."
"Tell me all you mean. Let there be no misunderstanding between us."
"Because my mother and my father seem somehow to have killed--though I am sure they would rather have killed themselves--your poor papa and mamma." And she leaned on my mother's headstone, and sobbed till I feared for her heart.
I put my arm around her waist, drew her towards me, and sat on my father's grave, with his niece upon my lap.
"Dearest, I could not be the child of those who sleep beneath us, if it were in my nature now to feel as you imagine. Years ago, I might have done so; though I hope not even then. Orphan as I am and helpless, already I perceive that I have not lived for nothing. My father, I believe, my mother, I am sure, would have laid down life with pleasure to see me led from wayward childhood even to what I am. Oh, Lily, you can't think how they loved me." And at the tender memory, came tears, the voice of silence.
Lily said not a word, but gathered and plaited a wreath of flowers, wherewith, as in a nuptial tie, she bound the white headstones together--anything so as not to disturb me just then. Even that trifle, a graceful idea born of her Southern origin, even that for the moment touched me deeply. Times there are when our souls seem to have taken hot baths in the springs of memory, and every pore of them is open.