One moment, and they were clasped in each other’s arms; the long hoarded love of years seemed all to flow out in that close, silent, passionate embrace, the next—and Mabel’s heart recalled with a pang as keen as death, his first words. A cold shudder crept over her.
“Walter, speak!” she almost gasped forth; “tell me, tell me truly, what have you to do with Evelyn?”
“I am her affianced husband,” he said, in those low, despairing tones that tell of a crushed and broken spirit; “but you, Mabel, why are you here; you, the proud and titled wife of a noble; say, beautiful vision, why have you come to mock me in this trying hour—to take from me all my firm resolves, and to light again the fire that for so long has smouldered in my poor, desolate heart. Oh, Mabel, Mabel, why were you false?”
At first, a bitter, piercing cry was her only answer. “Walter,” at length she said, with tearful accents, “for six long, weary years I have thought and wept and dreamed of only thee; my sleep was filled with visions so blissful of thy dear presence, that I dreaded the awakening, and yet, you could doubt me—ah, how little can man’s heart know of the depth, the devotedness, the unchanging constancy of woman’s love.”
“Mabel, you wrong me; indeed you wrong me. I did not doubt you, even through long months of utter silence, until there came that cruel letter signed by your father, and sent by your request, to tell of your marriage; yes, the words burnt into my heart like letters of fire, and can never, never be erased. How could I but think it true, in spite of all my faith, since it bore your father’s seal?”
With mute anguish Mabel heard this new revelation of her father’s sinful tyranny; she could hardly believe that he was capable of such meanness and guilt; she could not comprehend the absorbing nature of that eager grasping for power that has led men to wade through the blood even of near relatives to reach the object of their desires.
Then Walter spoke of their beloved friend, Mr. Dacre, of his death, so sudden at the last, though long expected; and Mabel knew, though no such words were spoken, that it was her father’s letter which had hastened the final blow.
She wept as she thought that never more on earth should she behold the face whose smile had been the sunshine of her youth, but even while she wept, a smile of triumph lit up her tear-bathed eyes, as she remembered he was now in a world where there is no doubting or darkness, “for the Lamb is the light thereof;” he knew now that his prayers, his lessons, and his example had not been all in vain, and that the trial of her faith, though a fiery one, had but strengthened and confirmed it.
Long and earnestly they conversed, and Mabel drew from her lover all his varied history. Into her ear he poured forth the long hidden, but still fervent love that even his belief in her estrangement could never subdue. Then he told of his promise to Charles Wentworth, of Evelyn’s tender love, and his almost involuntary engagement.
Mabel heard his words with a beating heart, each moment her cheek grew paler, but in her eye and on her lip there rested a look of calm, almost sublime self-sacrifice, a firm resolve to obey the dictates of that still, small voice within.