Oh, Bertha! hide thy face and weep. She was so lovely and so loving, so good and true, so patient and so tender, then. “Oh! how could’st thou forget it all, and steel thy heart against her, and vow the cruel vow never to forgive her sin? Thy mother—thy own mother, Bertha! think of it.”
A shadow fell across the window beside which she sat, and through her blinding tears Bertha looked up, and saw a woman standing there, holding by the hand a little child. Her face was very pale and worn, with sunken eyes and cheeks; her dress was mean and poor. She looked haggard and weary, and weak and ill; but Bertha knew that it was Gabrielle come back. She could not speak, for such a sudden rush of joy came to her softened heart that all words seemed swallowed up in it; such deep thankfulness for the forgiveness that seemed given her, that her first thought was not a welcome, but a prayer.
Gabrielle stood without, looking at her with her sad eyes.
“We are alone,” she said, “and very poor; will you take us in?”
Sobbing with pity and with joy, Bertha rose from her seat and hurried to the door. Trembling, she drew the wanderers in; then falling on her sister’s neck, her whole heart melted, and she cried, with gushing tears,
“Gabrielle, dear sister Gabrielle, I, too, am all alone!”
The tale that Gabrielle had to tell was full enough of sadness. They had lived together, she and her mother, for about a year, very peacefully, almost happily; and then the mother died, and Gabrielle soon after married one who had little to give her but his love. And after that the years passed on with many cares and griefs—for they were very poor, and he not strong—but with a great love ever between them, which softened the pain of all they had to bear. At last, after being long ill, he died, and poor Gabrielle and her child were left to struggle on alone.
“I think I should have died,” she said, as weeping, she told her story to her sister, “if it had not been for my boy; and I could so well have borne to die; but, Bertha, I could not leave him to starve! It pierced my heart with a pang so bitter that I cannot speak of it, to see his little face grow daily paler; his little feeble form become daily feebler and thinner; to watch the sad, unchildlike look fixing itself hourly deeper in his sweet eyes—so mournful, so uncomplaining, so full of misery. The sight killed me day by day; and then at last, in my despair, I said to myself that I would come again to you. I thought, sister—I hoped—that you would take my darling home, and then I could have gone away and died. But God bless you!—God bless you for the greater thing that you have done, my kind sister Bertha. Yes—kiss me, sister dear: it is so sweet. I never thought to feel a sister’s kiss again.”
Then kneeling down by Gabrielle’s side, with a low voice Bertha said: