“What! My God—not that, Grace: why, but yesterday you vowed you loved me!”
“Yes,” she interrupted, her eyes seeking the ground. “You are right: one day ago I was yours, to-day I am another’s. Then I thought I knew what love was, but I find that I was ignorant of that passion. It is cruel,” she said, “but with my soul in sympathy with another’s, I could not be faithful to you, Ralph. Forget me, as unworthy of your love. I regret the pain I have caused you. But I”——
“Stop,” he cried. “It is true you never loved me. Oh! that I should be deceived by a woman’s love. Go, and may the curse”——but with an angry movement she was gone. With a muttered curse for George Wardsworth, whom he knew too well was to be Grace’s successful suitor, and almost maddened with grief, he strode down the gravel walk and was lost in the gathering night.
An hour later he returned, haggard and broken-hearted; and with little wonder, for in a few short minutes all that earth held dear had been ruthlessly snatched from him. Yet not all: there was his sister, whom he loved so sincerely, she would be his one comfort in life; but ever before him lingered the vision of Grace Egerton’s lovely face.
As he neared the hotel, he paused and listened. Sweetly floated from the parlors on the still evening air, the grand words and melodious strains of “Lead, Kindly Light.” It was his sister’s voice, singing as she never had before, so it seemed to him. Almost divine became the music. Such strains as cause us for the moment to forget the outside world with its laughter and tears, and fill our minds with nobler and better thoughts.
And though the singer knew it not, there was one who heard and never forgot that hymn, which for the time soothed his wearied heart as he listened in the silence of the night.
The bustling, good-natured throng, crowding New York’s busy thoroughfares, and the brilliantly lighted show-windows, told to all that Christmas eve, with all that it suggests, had fallen upon the city.
On Fifth avenue a man hurried past the wealthy and cheerful homes of the most fortunate citizens. The electric light glared upon him and revealed the face of an old friend, Ralph Leighton. But how changed from the handsome Ralph of former days! His unfortunate love affair, followed by the death of that sister whom he so dearly loved, had added many a year to the once youthful face.