“How noble of you! Ah! what you both must have suffered! You need not tell me, either of you, for I know myself what it is to lose the woman one loves. I recollect my poor dear wife and still adore her memory.” And this from a man who was suspected of being leader of a gang of international criminals!
“The bitterness of the past,” I said, “will perhaps render the joy of the present all the sweeter.”
“It certainly ought to. Surely your delight at finding Ella alive and well when you, like all of us, believed her dead, must be beyond bounds?”
“It is! It is!” I cried. “I, who believed that she preferred wealth to my honest love; I, who have these long years been filled with a thousand regrets and reproaches, now know the truth. I have misjudged her!”
The soft hand of my well-beloved sought my wrist and gripped it. That action conveyed more to me than any words of hers could have done.
Presently it grew chilly, and we went into the long old-fashioned drawing-room, where we found Miss Miller, a pleasant grey-faced old lady, in a cap with cherry-coloured ribbons, idling over a book.
Upon the table still stood the portrait of my dear heart, the picture which only two days before had awakened within me such bitter remembrances. The silk-shaded lamps shed a soft light over everything, illuminating for the first time my Ella’s beautiful face. In the twilight by the river I had seen that she had become even more beautiful, yet the light that now fell upon her revealed a calmness and sweetness of expression that I had not hitherto been able to distinguish. She was far more lovely than I had believed—more beautiful even than in those days of our secret love.
Those great blue eyes looked out upon me with that same love-flame as of old—eyes that were clear and bright as a child’s, the glance of which would have made any man’s head reel—cheeks that were more delicately moulded than the marbles of Michael Angelo, and a grace that was perfect, complete, adorable.
And she was mine—still my own!
Strange that this sudden happiness was actually the sequel of a tragedy!