“No, I can not rest until I have seen my wife; you will understand my feelings, I am sure, Mr. Duncan;” and Fergus took down his hat from the peg, and said gravely that he could well understand them. “It is only a step,” he continued, “and I will just walk with you to the gate. The Rowans is Lady Redmond’s favorite haunt; she thinks there is no place to compare with the falls. You will find no difficulty if you follow the little path”—but with that rare intuition that belongs to a sympathetic character, Fergus said no more. He could see that Sir Hugh was much agitated at the thought of the impending meeting; and directly they reached the wicket-gate leading to the falls, he pointed to the path, and retraced his steps to the Manse.
Hugh gave a sigh of relief as he found himself alone. His hand shook a little as he unlatched the gate. As he passed the covered rustic seat he noticed a few sprays of withered heather that had been lying there since last year. Perhaps Fay had gathered them.
He hesitated a moment—should he wait for her here or seek her further? A trifle decided him. Among the raspberry bushes that tangled the underwood was a little bunch of wild flowers caught on a bramble. The floral message seemed to lure him onward, and he followed the narrow, winding path. By and by he came to a little green nook of a place as full of moss and sunshine as a nest; there was a great pool near it, where some silver trout were leaping and flashing in the light. The whole spot seemed to come before him strangely. Had he seen it in a dream?
He crept along cautiously. He fancied he had caught a white gleam between the trees that was neither sunshine nor water. He groped his way through the underwood, putting the branches back that they might not crackle, and then all at once he stood still; for he saw a little runlet of a stream making dimples of eddies round a fallen tree, and a great silver birch sweeping over it; and there, in her soft spring dress, with the ripples of golden-brown hair shining under her hat, was his lost Wee Wifie. She had floated a rowan-branch on the stream and was watching it idly, and Nero, sitting up on his haunches beside his little mistress, was watching it too.
Hugh’s heart beat faster as he looked at her. He had not admired her much in the old days, and yet how beautiful she was. Either his taste had changed or these sad months had altered her; but a fairer and a sweeter face he owned to himself that he had never seen, and all his man’s heart went out to her in in a deep and pitiful love. Just then there was a crackling in the bushes and Nero growled, and Fay, looking up startled, saw her husband standing opposite to her.
In life there are often strange meetings and partings; moments that seem to hold the condensed joy or pain of years. One grows a little stony—a little colorless. There are flushes perhaps, a weight and oppression of unshed tears, and a falter of questions never answered; but it is not until afterward that full consciousness comes, that one knows that the concentrated essence of bitterness or pleasure has been experienced, the memory of which will last to our dying days. It was so with Fay when she looked up from her mossy log and saw Hugh with his fair-bearded face standing under the dark larches. She did not faint or cry out, but she clasped her little hands, and said piteously, “Oh, Hugh, do not be angry with me. I tried so hard to be lost,” and then stood and shivered in the long grass.
“You tried so hard to be lost,” he said, in a choked voice. “Child, child, do you know what you have done; you have nearly broken my heart as well as your own. I have been very angry, Fay, but I have forgotten it now; but you must come back to me, darling, for I can not live without my Wee Wifie any more;” and as she hid her face in her trembling hands, not daring to look at him, he suddenly lifted the little creature in his arms; and as Fay felt herself drawn to his breast, she knew that she was no longer an unloved wife.
* * * * * *
She was calmer now. At his words and touch she had broken into an agony of weeping that had terrified him; but he had soothed her with fond words and kisses, and presently she was sitting beside him with her shy, sweet face radiant with happiness, and her hands clasped firmly in his. He had been telling her about his accident, and his sad solitary winter, and of the heart-sickness that he had suffered.
“Oh, my darling, will you ever forgive me?” she whispered. “It was for your sake I went. How could I know that you would miss me so—that you really wanted me? it nearly killed me to leave you; and I do not think I should have lived long if you had not found me.”