Norah, whose courage under undeserved calamity had been the courage of resignation—Norah, who had patiently accepted her hard lot; who from first to last had meditated no vengeance and stooped to no deceit—Norah had reached the end which all her sister’s ingenuity, all her sister’s resolution, and all her sister’s daring had failed to achieve. Openly and honorably, with love on one side and love on the other, Norah had married the man who possessed the Combe-Raven money—and Magdalen’s own scheme to recover it had opened the way to the event which had brought husband and wife together.
As the light of that overwhelming discovery broke on her mind, the old strife was renewed; and Good and Evil struggled once more which should win her—but with added forces this time; with the new spirit that had been breathed into her new life; with the nobler sense that had grown with the growth of her gratitude to the man who had saved her, fighting on the better side. All the higher impulses of her nature, which had never, from first to last, let her err with impunity—which had tortured her, before her marriage and after it, with the remorse that no woman inherently heartless and inherently wicked can feel—all the nobler elements in her character, gathered their forces for the crowning struggle and strengthened her to meet, with no unworthy shrinking, the revelation that had opened on her view. Clearer and clearer, in the light of its own immortal life, the truth rose before her from the ashes of her dead passions, from the grave of her buried hopes. When she looked at the letter again—when she read the words once more which told her that the recovery of the lost fortune was her sister’s triumph, not hers, she had victoriously trampled down all little jealousies and all mean regrets; she could say in her hearts of hearts, “Norah has deserved it!”
The day wore on. She sat absorbed in her own thoughts, and heedless of the second letter which she had not opened yet, until Kirke’s return.
He stopped on the landing outside, and, opening the door a little way only, asked, without entering the room, if she wanted anything that he could send her. She begged him to come in. His face was worn and weary; he looked older than she had seen him look yet. “Did you put my letter on the table for me?” she asked.
“Yes. I put it there at the doctor’s request.”
“I suppose the doctor told you it was from my sister? She is coming to see me, and Miss Garth is coming to see me. They will thank you for all your goodness to me better than I can.”
“I have no claim on their thanks,” he answered, sternly. “What I have done was not done for them, but for you.” He waited a little, and looked at her. His face would have betrayed him in that look, his voice would have betrayed him in the next words he spoke, if she had not guessed the truth already. “When your friends come here,” he resumed, “they will take you away, I suppose, to some better place than this.”
“They can take me to no place,” she said, gently, “which I shall think of as I think of the place where you found me. They can take me to no dearer friend than the friend who saved my life.”
There was a moment’s silence between them.
“We have been very happy here,” he went on, in lower and lower tones. “You won’t forget me when we have said good-by?”