“Prescott!” she whispered, with a husky voice, motioning to Chrissalyn to put her hand again on Planchette. Pagan was a name she had given him and which he delighted in, though unknown to any but her. The little board whirled away again with the same determined swing. Its very movements were characteristic of him, who had ever a trace of savageness and fierceness in all he did and much that he said. These were its words:
“Butterfly, tell her what I told you as we went home that last night.”
Now Chrissalyn began to tremble and tears gushed from her shining eyes. The conviction that it was Prescott who thus silently spoke to them came to her with overwhelming force.
“Cartice, it is Prescott, I am sure. He loved you with all his heart, and you know how intense that heart was in everything. I saw it from the very day I introduced him to you at the market house, when we went to hear Gabriel Norris preach. He adored you, but never spoke of it, and you were too blind and had too little vanity to see it. But that last night before his death, when he and I were walking home together after we had spent the evening with you, he told me about it. You remember he spoke of having a presentiment that happiness was near him, and he looked almost transfigured that night. He said he believed that somehow you would soon be free from your husband, and then he would take you whether or no. He swore to that. But the next morning he was dead. That’s what he wants me to tell—that’s what he means when he says ‘Love laughs at death as well as at locksmiths.’ He is the same—just the same kind, fierce old savage. He loves you still.”
“Why, Butterfly, this is astonishing,” said Cartice, in amazement. “I thought you and he loved each other, and that you were made for each other.”
“I loved him; but he loved you, not me.”
This touched Mrs. Doring beyond her power to express. She tried to speak, but could say nothing, for a great lump, like a live coal, had closed her throat.
“I was never jealous,” continued Chrissalyn, “no, never; but a trifle melancholy at times, wishing he loved me instead of you, because I saw that you didn’t love him, only as a good comrade, and didn’t know that he loved you. If you had loved him I don’t think I should have been jealous, because I love you so much.”
Both pairs of eyes were moist now. Cartice rearranged Planchette, and after kissing her friend’s dainty hand placed it thereon again.
“Yes; it is true, I love you, Cartice, and did from the beginning,” wrote the little board, with the same impetuous dash.