"And saddening enough was the recital of the young man's sorrows. He began with saying that he had scrupulously abstained from ever mentioning his attachment to Mary while he had lived, but he could not refrain from asking her pity for him when he could never more disturb or injure her. He inclosed to her his journal, kept from the first day he saw her, when he loved her with all the fervor of his southern nature, and all the confidence of youth. Then followed the shock of hearing from Mr. Dunbar's own lips of his sister's engagement and approaching marriage. Then the farewell note of wounded affection that assumed indifference. Then a long delirious fever; then the news of Mary's marriage; and then the vain attempt to conquer his ill-fated love. His delight in his correspondence with her; it had been the life of his life, all that soothed the downward passage to the grave. To that grave he had gladly come, feeling that happiness was forever denied him, and only begged her to believe in his never-varying love from the moment he met her to this dying hour, when he signed his name to the last words he should address to mortal.
"All that she had lost—all she might have been, and might have enjoyed in a union with this young man, so brilliant, so amiable, so devoted, rushed on my heart, and contrasting with the reality a few paces off, made me weep bitterly. Oh! had they never loved so kindly!
"I sat long with the manuscript, looking at the writing, some of it years old, and written with a firm, flowing hand, then varying through all the vicissitudes of health and feeling, till it trembled and died away in its last farewell. The peculiar tenderness with which we look on the handwriting of the dead, however personally unknown, affected me. This young man I had seen, though seldom; and I easily connected the memoir before me with the memory of his dark, curling hair, his olive complexion, and the graceful dignity of his manner. I saw his bright eye dim, the dew of suffering on his brow, his cheek pale with anguish of heart and body, and the last flicker of his glorious light going out in darkness.
"From these thoughts I was roused by a sudden and deep groan; it seemed near me, and I sprung to my feet. Bells rang; there was a rush on the staircaise—a shriek—another rush—the opening of doors wildly; all this was in a moment—in the moment I ran out of my room toward Mary's where an undefined and terrible fear taught me to look.
"You will guess what met my appalled gaze. Mr. Gardner, who had returned from a journey while I was reading in my own room, hastened up stairs to see Mary. At the moment he entered, she had completed the act which terminated her life. He received in his arms the lifeless body. The suffering soul still hovered unconsciously. We believe that God who made us, alone can try us, and He who knew all the wo that 'wrought like madness in her brain,' can both pity and forgive."
A deep silence followed Madame Stanwood's relation. Alice and Louise were thinking how little such an experience could have been guessed from Mr. Gardner's exterior.
"I wonder," said Louisa at last, "if he ever knew he cause of Mary's death—did you give him the manuscript, grandmother?"
"Well—what should I have done?"
"Oh! I would have given it to him! I would have rejoiced to see him one hour feeling all the agony which poor Mary had felt so long!"
"That is very natural, my child, for you to say; and, I confess, when I saw him first—his clothes covered with his wife's life-blood, and her marble face on his shoulder; when I saw his calmness, his complete self-possession, the directions he gave for the physician, all the time keeping his hand so pressed on the wound, that no more blood should flow; when I saw him hold her till the surgeon closed the wound, and then place his hand on the heart, and watch its beating, if happily life might yet linger there; when I saw this, I longed to say, 'thou cold-hearted being! she is beyond the chill of thine icy love—care not for her! the grave is softer and warmer than thou art!'