'Is there no one belonging to you to whom I can be of service?' he asked. 'I see among the witnesses on the trial the name of a young man who appears to have assisted you in the inquiries which led to the prisoner's conviction. Is he a relation?'
'No, sir—at least, not now—but I hope—'
'What?'
'I hope that he may, one day, be the nearest and dearest relation to me that a woman can have.' I said those words boldly, because I was afraid of his otherwise taking some wrong view of the connection between Robert and me
'One day?' he repeated. 'One day may be a long time hence.'
'We are neither of us well off, sir,' I said. 'One day means the day when we are a little richer than we are now.'
'Is the young man educated? Can he produce testimonials to his character? Oblige me by writing his name and address down on the back of that card.'
When I had obeyed, in a handwriting which I am afraid did me no credit, he took out another card and gave it to me.
'I shall leave England to-morrow,' he said. 'There is nothing now to keep me in my own country. If you are ever in any difficulty or distress (which I pray God you may never be), apply to my London agent, whose address you have there.'
He stopped, and looked at me attentively, then took my hand again.
'Where is she buried?' he said, suddenly, in a quick whisper, turning his head away.
I told him, and added that we had made the grave as beautiful as we could with grass and flowers. I saw his lips whiten and tremble.
'God bless and reward you!' he said, and drew me toward him quickly and kissed my forehead. I was quite overcome, and sank down and hid my face on the table. When I looked up again he was gone.
* * * * * * *
June 25th, 1841. I write these lines on my wedding morning, when little more than a year has passed since Robert returned to England.
His salary was increased yesterday to one hundred and fifty pounds a year. If I only knew where Mr. Mallinson was, I would write and tell him of our present happiness. But for the situation which his kindness procured for Robert, we might still have been waiting vainly for the day that has now come.
I am to work at home for the future, and Sally is to help us in our new abode. If Mary could have lived to see this day! I am not ungrateful for my blessings; but oh, how I miss that sweet face on this morning of all others!
I got up to-day early enough to go alone to the grave, and to gather the nosegay that now lies before me from the flowers that grow round it. I shall put it in my bosom when Robert comes to fetch me to the church. Mary would have been my bridesmaid if she had lived; and I can't forget Mary, even on my wedding-day....
THE NIGHT.
THE last words of the last story fell low and trembling from Owen's lips. He waited for a moment while Jessie dried the tears which Anne Rodway's simple diary had drawn from her warm young heart, then closed the manuscript, and taking her hand patted it in his gentle, fatherly way.
'You will be glad to hear, my love,' he said, 'that I can speak from personal experience of Anne Rodway's happiness. She came to live in my parish soon after the trial at which she appeared as chief witness, and I was the clergyman who married her. Months before that I knew her story, and had read those portions of her diary which you have just heard. When I made her my little present on her wedding day, and when she gratefully entreated me to tell her what she could do for me in return, I asked for a copy of her diary to keep among the papers that I treasured most. 'The reading of it now and then,' I said, 'will encourage that faith in the brighter and better part of human nature which I hope, by God's help, to preserve pure to my dying day.' In that way I became possessed of the manuscript: it was Anne's husband who made the copy for me. You have noticed a few withered leaves scattered here and there between the pages. They were put there, years since, by the bride's own hand: they are all that now remain of the flowers that Anne Rodway gathered on her marriage morning from Mary Mallinson's grave.'
Jessie tried to answer, but the words failed on her lips. Between the effect of the story, and the anticipation of the parting now so near at hand, the good, impulsive, affectionate creature was fairly overcome. She laid her head on Owen's shoulder, and kept tight hold of his hand, and let her heart speak simply for itself, without attempting to help it by a single word.
The silence that followed was broken harshly by the tower clock. The heavy hammer slowly rang out ten strokes through the gloomy night-time and the dying storm.
I waited till the last humming echo of the clock fainted into dead stillness. I listened once more attentively, and again listened in vain. Then I rose, and proposed to my brothers that we should leave our guest to compose herself for the night.
When Owen and Morgan were ready to quit the room, I took her by the hand, and drew her a little aside.
'You leave us early, my dear,' I said; 'but, before you go to-morrow morning—'
I stopped to listen for the last time, before the words were spoken which committed me to the desperate experiment of pleading George's cause in defiance of his own request. Nothing caught my ear but the sweep of the weary weakened wind and the melancholy surging of the shaken trees.
'But, before you go to-morrow morning,' I resumed, 'I want to speak to you in private. We shall breakfast at eight o'clock. Is it asking too much to beg you to come and see me alone in my study at half past seven?'
Just as her lips opened to answer me I saw a change pass over her face. I had kept her hand in mine while I was speaking, and I must have pressed it unconsciously so hard as almost to hurt her. She may even have uttered a few words of remonstrance; but they never reached me: my whole hearing sense was seized, absorbed, petrified. At the very instant when I had ceased speaking, I, and I alone, heard a faint sound—a sound that was new to me—
