Chapter XXXVI: “love Is Love Forevermore.”

“This is truth, the poet sings--
That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow
Is remembering happier things.”--TENNYSON.

More than a year has passed away since Earle’s repentant soul passed from earth.

Vivian has been traveling the most of the time with Madame Orne. Charlton has been with them often, but he is glad when they come back to Richmond and settle down again. The dull desk in his law office does not seem so gloomy now when he can spend his evenings at that pleasant home on Grace street.

When Doctor Verne comes to call on them early after their return, he is delighted at the improvement in both. Madame Orne is unaffectedly glad to see him. He has always been a prime favorite with her, from the old collegiate days until now. She greets him with a glad welcome, but Vivian is quiet and constrained. She sits at a distance from them, across the room, unconscious of the lovely picture she makes in her long, white robe with those trailing sprays of white hyacinths twined in the wavy darkness of her hair.

Yet, calm as she is to all outward seeming, her heart thrills to its very depths listening to the voice of her girlhood’s lover. Every drop of blood in her body seems to answer to his presence as by some strange, occult power. Nervous and restless, she rises at last, and leans from the window, watching the dusky horizon where a continuous display of swift lightning breaks up the oppressive heat of the May evening. A stately magnolia tree looms up in front of the window, and the rapid play of the electric elements among the polished dark green leaves and large, fragrant, white blossoms is inexpressibly weird and beautiful.

“Have you put away childish things? You used to fear the lightning, I remember,” sounded a quiet voice by her side.

Doctor Verne is beside her, watching with admiring eyes the sublime beauty of the night and the storm, for now large drops of rain come pattering down, making weird music in the rustling leaves of the trees. Madame Orne is at the grand organ, waking with skillful fingers a melancholy strain, like a minor chord in the voice of the hurrying storm.

Vivian only smiles and stays beside him, watching the swift rain falling, and the wild gale blowing. How sweet the magnolias are! The wind and rain bruise their white petals and flood the room with their strong yet delicate fragrance. Vivian feels her heart stir with passionate pain, and with an incoherent excuse about Charlie leaves the room.

Madame Orne takes her place by Max immediately, but she fears the storm, he can see, by the swift paling of her lips.

Shutting down the window, he leads her to a seat.

“You should never expose yourself to any danger that you fear. Always remember that,” he tells her gravely.

“But, Max, I am quite well now. You told me yourself that quiet and happiness had almost entirely removed my slight heart trouble.”

“But I warned you also that any great shock or painful emotion, even undue excitement, might revive the slumbering symptoms and actually jeopardize your life. I have always been quite frank with you on this subject because you desired me to be. Your chances for a long life rest wholly on quiet, happiness and freedom from the harsher emotions that play on the strings of fear or grief.”

“A stagnant life,” she smiles, but it is a beautiful smile--a smile that is new to her lips, it is so sweet and glad.

“Not a stagnant life, but a quiet life--a summer day and a summer sky. Happiness, not strife.”

“Then I am likely to live long, _mon ami_, for my life promises to be very fair hereafter.”

“You have a secret. Tell it to me, and I will rejoice with you,” he exclaims in that fascinating manner that is almost impossible to resist.

In another minute she is telling him shyly that Charlton has sent a little note asking her for a private interview to-morrow. Her quick blushes betray what he has long suspected--that for her and Charlton a new era has dawned--that of love.

“But don’t congratulate me yet,” she continues; “let us talk of yourself and Vivian. I am puzzled over something,” and she tells him the story of that night when Vivian had written to him and she had found Earle Essex tampering with the letter.

“You know I was spirited away so soon afterward, and everything went wrong at Leigh Place. And now let me tell you something, Max. When Earle Essex was ill at the asylum Vivian accidentally became possessed of a letter signed with her name and hidden in the cavity of a skull.”

“I remember it,” he answers, flushing deeply. “That was the letter she wrote me in reply to mine.”

“Vivian never wrote you that letter, Max. The one she wrote you was sweet, warm, impulsive, breathing nothing but kindness and the desire for your forgiveness. That letter was abstracted from her desk and the one you received put in its place. She received soon after a letter signed with your name--a cold, cruel, sarcastic note that maddened the loving, sensitive girl and drove her desperate. She was told soon afterward that you were to be married in September. Do you understand now why poor little Vivian was piqued into marrying Earle Essex?”

Pale to the lips he sat before her--pale and dumb with agony, comprehending the monstrous wrong that had been done to him and Vivian.

“It was Earle Essex’s sin,” Madame Orne continued solemnly. “He told Viva he had a secret to confess to her before he died--but the morrow on which she was to hear it never came. But could he have lived to confess it, that is what he would have told her--that he deliberately planned and carried out the successful forgeries that widened the breach between you and Viva, until you were irrevocably driven apart.”

“Oh, God, it is too true!” he groaned; “but--the dead are sacred--I must not curse him.”

“And Viva?” she breathes.

Leaning forward, he lifts her delicate hand chivalrously to his lips.

“Madame Orne, may God forever bless you for your goodness to me. To-day you have given me back what I once held inexpressibly dear--my faith in Vivian’s constancy and truth. I thought in those past days that I had won her young heart for my own, but that letter was the coldest and the cruelest that ever struck down a young man’s hope and trust. But, thank God and you, dear madam, I can give her back the faith of old.”

“And the old place in your heart, Max?”

“She has always kept it,” answers this loyal lover.