"She is dying," he said, "and I cannot ask that she should live."
"What was my life"--he cried passionately, speaking again--"what was my
life to me that I should not have given it to save her,--to save her
to her beauty and honor, and her mother's love! I would have given it
cheerfully,--a thousand times,--a thousand times again and again. But it
was not to be; and, in spite of my prayers, I lost her. O my God!" with
a sob of agony, "if to-night she were in St. Croix and I could hear the
neighbors call her again as they used, 'Mère Giraud's little daughter!'"
The eyes of the _Curé_ had tears in them also.
"Yesterday I returned to St. Croix and found your mother absent," he
said. "I have had terrible fears for months, and when I found her house
closed, they caused me to set out upon my journey at once."
He did not ask any questions. He remembered too well the man of whom
Valentin had written; the son who was "past his youth, and had evidently
seen the world;" the pale aristocrat, who had exclaimed "_Mon Dieu!_" at
the sight of Laure's wondrous beauty.
"When the worst came to the worst," said Valentin, "I vowed myself to
the labor of sparing our mother. I have worked early and late to sustain
myself in the part I played. It was not from Laure the money came.
My God! Do you think I would have permitted my mother's hand to have
touched a gift of hers? She wrote the letters, but the money I had
earned honestly. Heaven will justify me for my falsehood since I have
suffered so much."
"Yes," responded the _Curé_, looking at his bent form with gentle,
pitying eyes, "Heaven will justify you, my son."
They watched by Laure until the morning, but she did not see them; she
saw nothing; to-night it was the statue of marble which lay before them.
But in the early morning, when the sky was dappled with pink and gold,
and the air was fresh and cool, and a silence, even more complete than
that of the night, seemed to reign, there came a change. The eyes they
had seen closed for so many hours were opened, and the soft voice broke
in upon the perfect stillness of the room:--
"The lilies in the garden are in bloom to-day. They were never so tall,
and white, and fair before. I will gather them--for the altar--to give
to the Virgin--at my confession. _Mea culpa--Mea_"--and all was over, and
Mère Giraud fell upon her knees again, crying, as she had cried before,
amid a passion of sobs and tears:--
"She has died, my child, the death of a blessed martyr."
It was rather strange, the villagers said, that Madame Legrand should
have been buried in the little graveyard at St. Croix instead of in some
fine tomb at _Père la Chaise_; but--it was terribly sad!--her husband
was away, they knew not where, and it was Valentin's wish, and Mère
Giraud's heart yearned so over her beloved one. So she was laid there,
and a marble cross was placed at her head--a tall, beautiful cross--by
Monsieur Legrand, of course. Only it was singular that he never came,
though perhaps that is the way of the great--not to mourn long or
deeply even for those who have been most lovely, and whom they have most
tenderly loved.