KENELM went back alone, and with downcast looks, through the desolate,
flowerless garden, when at the other side of the gate a light touch
was laid on his arm. He looked up, and recognized Mrs. Cameron.
"I saw you," she said, "from my window coming to the house, and I have
been waiting for you here. I wished to speak to you alone. Allow me
to walk beside you."'
Kenelm inclined his head assentingly, but made no answer. They were
nearly midway between the cottage and the burial-ground when Mrs.
Cameron resumed, her tones quick and agitated, contrasting her
habitual languid quietude,--
"I have a great weight on my mind; it ought not to be remorse. I
acted as I thought in my conscience for the best. But oh, Mr.
Chillingly, if I erred,--if I judged wrongly, do say you at least
forgive me." She seized his hand, pressing it convulsively. Kenelm
muttered inaudibly: a sort of dreary stupor had succeeded to the
intense excitement of grief. Mrs. Cameron went on,--
"You could not have married Lily; you know you could not. The secret
of her birth could not, in honour, have been concealed from your
parents. They could not have consented to your marriage; and even if
you had persisted, without that consent and in spite of that secret,
to press for it,--even had she been yours--"
"Might she not be living now?" cried Kenelm, fiercely.
"No,--no; the secret must have come out. The cruel world would have
discovered it; it would have reached her ears. The shame of it would
have killed her. How bitter then would have been her short interval
of life! As it is, she passed away,--resigned and happy. But I own
that I did not, could not, understand her, could not believe her
feeling for you to be so deep. I did think that when she knew her own
heart she would find that love for her guardian was its strongest
affection. She assented, apparently without a pang, to become his
wife; and she seemed always so fond of him, and what girl would not
be? But I was mistaken, deceived. From the day you saw her last, she
began to fade away; but then Walter left a few days after, and I
thought that it was his absence she mourned. She never owned to me
that it was yours,--never till too late,--too late,--just when my sad
letter had summoned him back, only three days before she died. Had I
known earlier, while yet there was hope of recovery, I must have
written to you, even though the obstacles to your union with her
remained the same. Oh, again I implore you, say that if I erred you
forgive me. She did, kissing me so tenderly. She did forgive me.
Will not you? It would have been her wish."
"Her wish? Do you think I could disobey it? I know not if I have
anything to forgive. If I have, now could I not forgive one who loved
her? God comfort us both."
He bent down and kissed Mrs. Cameron's forehead. The poor woman threw
her arm gratefully, lovingly round him, and burst into tears.
When she had recovered her emotion, she said,--
"And now, it is with so much lighter a heart that I can fulfil her
commission to you. But, before I place this in your hands, can you
make me one promise? Never tell Melville how she loved you. She was
so careful he should never guess that. And if he knew it was the
thought of union with him which had killed her, he would never smile
again."
"You would not ask such a promise if you could guess how sacred from
all the world I hold the secret that you confide to me. By that
secret the grave is changed into an altar. Our bridals now are only a
while deferred."
Mrs. Cameron placed a letter in Kenelm's hand, and murmuring in
accents broken by a sob, "She gave it to me the day before her last,"
left him, and with quick vacillating steps hurried back towards the
cottage. She now understood him, at last, too well not to feel that
on opening that letter he must be alone with the dead.
It is strange that we need have so little practical household
knowledge of each other to be in love. Never till then had Kenelm's
eyes rested upon Lily's handwriting. And he now gazed at the formal
address on the envelope with a sort of awe. Unknown handwriting
coming to him from an unknown world,--delicate, tremulous
handwriting,--handwriting not of one grown up, yet not of a child who
had long to live.
He turned the envelope over and over,--not impatiently, as does the
lover whose heart beats at the sound of the approaching footstep, but
lingeringly, timidly. He would not break the seal.
He was now so near the burial-ground. Where should the first letter
ever received from her--the sole letter he ever could receive--be so
reverentially, lovingly read, as at her grave?
He walked on to the burial-ground, sat down by the grave, broke the
envelope; a poor little ring, with a poor little single turquoise,
rolled out and rested at his feet. The letter contained only these
words,--
The ring comes back to you. I could not live to marry another. I
never knew how I loved you--till, till I began to pray that you might
not love me too much. Darling! darling! good-by, darling!
LILY.
Don't let Lion ever see this, or ever know what it says to you. He is
so good, and deserves to be so happy. Do you remember the day of the
ring? Darling! darling!