She closed the book suddenly, with a half-stifled sob. The moon was rising, silver pale, above the dark ridge of moorland. The last streak of golden light had faded behind the red trunks of the firs. The low, melancholy cry of an owl sounded far off in the dark heart of the wood. It was indeed as if—
“The owls had all fled far away
In a merrier glen to hoot and play.”
In such a spot a mind attuned to melancholy might easily shape spectral forms out of the evening shadows, and call up the ghosts of the loved and lost. Laura looked up from her book with a strange uncanny feeling, as if, indeed, some ghostly presence were near. Her eyes wandered slowly across the rocky bed of the river, and there, on the opposite bank, half in shadow, half in the tender light of the big round moon, she saw a tall figure and a pale face looking at her. She rose with a half-stifled cry of fear. That face looked so spectral in the mystical light. And then she clasped her hands joyously and cried, “I knew you would come back!”
This was the deserter’s welcome. No frown, no upbraidings—a sweet face beaming with delight, a happy voice full of fondest welcome.
“Humph,” cries the woman-hater, “what fools these women are!”
John Treverton came, stepping lightly across the rocks, at some risk of measuring his length in the stony bed of the river, and in less than a minute was by his wife’s side.
Not a word did he say for the first moment or so. His greeting was dumb. He took her to his heart, and kissed her as he had never kissed her yet.
“My own one, my wife!” he cried. “You are all mine now. Love, I have been patient. Don’t be hard with me.”
This last remonstrance was because she had drawn herself away from his arms, and was looking at him with a smile which was no longer tender, but ironical.
“Have you come back to Hazlehurst to spend an evening?” she asked, “or can you prolong your visit for a week?”
“I have come back to spend my life with you—I have come back to stay forever! They may begin to build me a vault tomorrow in Hazlehurst churchyard. I shall be here to occupy it, when my time comes—if you will have me. That is the question, Laura. It all depends on you. Oh, love, love, answer me quickly. If you but knew how I have longed for this moment. Tell me, sweet, have I quite worn out your love? Has my conduct forfeited your esteem forever?”
“You have behaved very unkindly to me,” she answered, slowly, gravely, her voice trembling a little. “You have used me in a manner which I think a woman with proper womanly pride could hardly forgive.”
“Laura,” he cried, piteously.
“But I fear I am not possessed of proper womanly pride: for I have forgiven you,” she said, innocently.
“My treasure! my delight!”
“But it would have been so much easier to forgive if you had trusted me, if you had told me, all the truth. Oh, John, husband and yet no husband, you have treated me very cruelly.”
Here she forgot her unreasoning joy at seeing him again, and suddenly remembered herself and her wrongs.
“I know, love,” he said, on his knees beside her, “I seem to have acted vilely, and yet, believe me, dearest, any sole motive was the desire to protect your interests.”
“Your conduct has put me to shame before all mankind,” urged Laura, meaning the village of Hazlehurst. “You have no right to approach me, no right to look me in the face. Have you not confessed in that cruel letter that you were not free to marry me, that you belong in some way to another woman.”
“That other woman is dead. I am free as the air.”
“What was she? Your wife?”
There was a look of infinite pain in John Treverton’s face. His lips moved as if about to speak, but he was silent. There are some truths difficult of utterance; and it is not easy to all men to lie.
“It is too painful a story,” he began, at last, speaking hurriedly, as if he wanted to make a speedy end of a hateful subject. “A good many years ago, when I was very young, and a most consummate fool—I got myself entrapped into a Scotch marriage. You have heard of the peculiarities of the marriage law in Scotland.”
“Yes, I have heard and read about them.”
“Of course. Well, it was a marriage and no marriage—a reckless, half-jesting promise, tortured, by false witnesses, into a legal undertaking. I found myself, unawares, a married man—a millstone tied round my neck. I will tell you no more of that wretched entanglement, dearest. It would not be good for you to hear. I will only say that I bore my burden more patiently than most men would have borne it, and now I thank God with all my heart and soul for my freedom. And I come to you, dear love, to implore your forgiveness, and to ask you to join me, three weeks hence, in some quiet place thirty or forty miles from here, where no one will know us, and where we may be married again some fine summer morning; so that, if that Scotch marriage of mine were really binding, and our former marriage illegal, we may tie the knot securely, and forever.”
“You should have trusted me at first, John,” Laura said reproachfully.
“I ought to have done so, love, but I so feared to lose you. Oh, my darling, grant all I ask, and you shall never have cause to regret your goodness. Forgive me, and forget all that I have told you tonight. Let it be as if it
