She leaned her head upon my shoulder and wept in silence for a moment. I would have checked her, but there were sobs in my own voice, and water in my eyes. At last when I had calmed myself a little, I stroked her hair kindly and consolingly, entreating her to be quiet and composed. "You shall harm yourself, with crying, and they will blame me" I urged, "so cheer up like a good little woman, and be yourself again."
She looked up quickly, as I spoke, the fresh tears trembled on her lids, like dew upon the petals of some woodland flower, but a smile, as bright as the sun-ray that dispels the dew-drop broke over her wan and wasted countenance, as she answered:
"Blame you! Oh Amey I have never been so happy, as with you. You have been more than a sister to me, you have done for me what no one else in the world would have thought of doing for another but Amey Hampden!"
"It has brought you no benefit, my little woman" I said regretfully, "although I believed your happiness was partly in my hands at the time."
"It has brought me more than you can ever realize, Amey," she interrupted, falling back among her pillows, tired from her exertion. "It has held the cup of a soothing friendship to my parched and fevered lip whose draught has dispelled every sorrow that lay hopeless and heavy upon my heart. If life could tempt me, now, to return to my former vigour and strength, it need only hold up to my dying eyes the picture of your unselfish heroism. When one has a friend, such as you have been, the pleasures of the world have a double sweetness; in a little while" she added, lowering her voice, and looking away towards the western horizon, into which the setting sun had begun to dip his yellow rays, "I will have left all these things behind me; the joys and sorrows of my young life will recede together into the mists of time, as I go on to my eternity—but, I know there will be some remaining who will carry my memory, the memory of my little life, that was not more than half spent, through all the years of her own happy one, someone to pray for me, to commune with me in spirit, even when I have passed into that shadow-land. And that will be you, my Amey. Perhaps it will comfort you then, to remember that I died in peace and contentment after all—for my poor prayer has been heard in heaven. When I wrote you that last letter, about my dawning compensation, I could see that I had not made my sacrifice in vain, Bayard was changing, every one saw it, resolving himself into the better man, he has since become, and more than that, Amey—oh, how it thrills me to think of it!" she exclaimed with reverent ardour "a change has taken place elsewhere! We received a letter from the superintendent of the asylum where poor Inez is confined, telling us that she had many lucid moments of late, and that her attendants had frequently found her upon her knees, with streaming eyes and trembling hands, imploring forgiveness for her past follies. This was soon followed by a second one, which urged Bayard to go to her: her health and strength were failing, it said, and there were great hopes of her recovering her senses before death. His name, it further stated, was ever on her lips.
"Bayard had a terrible struggle with his pride and his passions. He walked the room through the whole of one livelong night, sighing and moaning, and talking to himself in muttered syllables—mamma and I could hear him, and he prayed unceasingly, again and again. I renewed my promises and my life oblation. Towards morning Bayard grew calmer and when the sun rose he unlocked his door and came to seek us in our seclusion. How pale his handsome face had grown! How wild and dishevelled his wavy hair! How marked were the lines of misery and care around his mouth and eyes! He came to my bed and leaned tenderly over me, I could see the traces of his recent conflict so plainly then."
"'Good-bye, little sister,' he said, 'I am going away for a few days, take care of yourself during my absence,—and pray for me.' He kissed me with his cold, dry lips and turned away. When he came back a week later there was a peaceful sadness where his misery had been. He had seen Inez again; had sat by her death-bed and held her dying hand in generous forgiveness. He believed her then that she sorely repented of her past. Her dark hair had turned almost white, and where rich curves of beauty had marked the outlines of her face and form there were hollows and angles of emaciation and suffering. She died with a pleading for pardon and mercy upon her lips, and Bayard came back a better man. He says he will devote the remainder of his life to an atonement for his past, and this is what I have been waiting to hear before I could die in peace. I cannot presume to say," Hortense added humbly, "that my poor prayers alone could have brought about these wonderful conversions, but I suppose they have helped, the good sisters at Notre Dame always told us to 'ask and we should receive,' and I believe them now. What is the pledge I have made to the fruit it has yielded? The happiness which the world affords is well lost in such a cause as this. Is it not, my Amey?"
"Indeed it is," I answered earnestly, "but all the same I think you have done the most noble and heroic of Christian actions in enlisting against your own earthly happiness to favor such a cause however worthy it may be."
"I do not regret it now, Amey," she said with a sweet, sad smile; "when we look back upon our lives from the watch-tower of a dawning eternity we are glad to see some noble effort standing out in relief from all the daily transgressions that confront us. I wish now there were more such purposes in my empty life."
"This one comprised all others, it seems to me," I put in, earnestly, "you renounced even the possible and uncertain joys of the world. You lived under the yoke of this voluntary self-sacrifice, which was bringing you nearer and nearer every day to your reward."