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Page 46
'Not at home!' he gasped. 'But when will she be home?'
'I fancy she won't be long. She went out an hour ago, and she has an
appointment with her dressmaker at five.'
'Do you know in what direction she'd have gone?'
'Oh, she generally walks on the Heath before tea.'
The world suddenly grew rosy again. 'I will come back again,' he said.
Yes, a walk in this glorious air--heathward--would do him good.
As the door shut he remembered he might have left the flowers, but he
would not ring again, and besides, it was, perhaps, better he should
present them with his own hand, than let her find them on the hall
table. Still, it seemed rather awkward to walk about the streets with a
bouquet, and he was glad, accidentally to strike the old Hampstead
Church, and to seek a momentary seclusion in passing through its avenue
of quiet gravestones on his heathward way.
Mounting the few steps, he paused idly a moment on the verge of this
green 'God's-acre' to read a perpendicular slab on a wall, and his face
broadened into a smile as he followed the absurdly elaborate biography
of a rich, self-made merchant who had taught himself to read, 'Reader,
go thou and do likewise,' was the delicious bull at the end. As he
turned away, the smile still lingering about his lips, he saw a dainty
figure tripping down the stony graveyard path, and though he was somehow
startled to find her still in black, there was no mistaking Mrs.
Glamorys. She ran to meet him with a glad cry, which filled his eyes
with happy tears.
'How good of you to remember!' she said, as she took the bouquet from
his unresisting hand, and turned again on her footsteps. He followed her
wonderingly across the uneven road towards a narrow aisle of graves on
the left. In another instant she has stooped before a shining white
stone, and laid his bouquet reverently upon it. As he reached her side,
he saw that his flowers were almost lost in the vast mass of floral
offerings with which the grave of the woman beater was bestrewn.
'How good of you to remember the anniversary,' she murmured again.
'How could I forget it?' he stammered, astonished. 'Is not this the end
of the terrible twelve-month?'
The soft gratitude died out of her face. 'Oh, is _that_ what you were
thinking of?'
'What else?' he murmured, pale with conflicting emotions.
'What else! I think decency demanded that this day, at least, should be
sacred to his memory. Oh, what brutes men are!' And she burst into
tears.
His patient breast revolted at last. 'You said _he_ was the brute!' he
retorted, outraged.
'Is that your chivalry to the dead? Oh, my poor Harold, my poor Harold!'
For once her tears could not extinguish the flame of his anger. 'But you
told me he beat you,' he cried.
'And if he did, I dare say I deserved it. Oh, my darling, my darling!'
She laid her face on the stone and sobbed.
John Lefolle stood by in silent torture. As he helplessly watched her
white throat swell and fall with the sobs, he was suddenly struck by the
absence of the black velvet band--the truer mourning she had worn in the
lifetime of the so lamented. A faint scar, only perceptible to his
conscious eye, added to his painful bewilderment.
At last she rose and walked unsteadily forward. He followed her in mute
misery. In a moment or two they found themselves on the outskirts of the
deserted heath. How beautiful stretched the gorsy rolling country! The
sun was setting in great burning furrows of gold and green--a panorama
to take one's breath away. The beauty and peace of Nature passed into
the poet's soul.
'Forgive me, dearest,' he begged, taking her hand.
She drew it away sharply. 'I cannot forgive you. You have shown yourself
in your true colours.'
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