Chapter LV: The Rest Is Peace

“There must have been a spell in Aldenmere,” so people said. This was the second fair young wife who had been carried from there to the grave; the second who had met with a tragical death. What would become of the place? Who would take care of the children? These and a hundred other questions they asked, but no one answered them.

They did not bury Lady Hermione by Clarice’s side. Lord Lorriston, knowing all, could not endure the thought of it. She was taken thence, and the grave is on the western side of Leeholme churchyard, a warm, lovely, sunny spot, where the sun shines and the dew falls, where birds sing sweetest music and flowers yield richest perfume. The story of her deep, true love and unutterable sorrow, of her grief and heroic self-sacrifice, are buried with her.

The little Harry was heir to Aldenmere, but Lord Lorriston said the associations connected with the place were all so sad, that the children should not live there; they should make their home at Leeholme until the young heir was of age, and then he could please himself about returning there. The servants were all paid off; they were not sorry to leave a place rendered gloomy by two such tragedies. Some of them declared that long as they lived they should never regain their natural spirits.

Aldenmere was closed. The head gamekeeper and his wife were put in charge of the place. The state apartments, the magnificent guests’ chambers, the superb reception-rooms, were all closed and left to solitary desolation. Lord Lorriston declared that he never even wished to see the place again--it was so full of sorrowful memories for him.

The little orphan children were taken home to Leeholme, where, under the loving care of Lord and Lady Lorriston, they grew in strength, beauty and goodness. The after life of Sir Henry Alden, of Aldenmere, was eventful, but his story has been told by pens more eloquent than mine. The little child whom Sir Ronald kissed and blessed before he went on that long voyage from which he was never to return, made his name famous all over Europe. There was one thing he never knew, and that was the true history of his father’s life. Nor was that secret ever known.

Kenelm Eyrle found some means of pacifying the detectives he had so hastily summoned. They never heard one word of the truth, nor was it ever told; Lord Lorriston never even told his wife, and the secret of the first Lady Alden’s death remains a secret still.

Lord and Lady Lorriston found comfort after a time in the children they had adopted. Baby Maud grew up the exact picture of her mother, the same sweet face and tender eyes. There were times when, as Lorriston grew older, he would forget the tragedy at Aldenmere, and, seeing the golden head, would call her Hermione. There were times, too, when he longed to take the child on his knee and tell her how nobly her mother had kept her vow. But he never did so. The children grew up with no other knowledge save that their parents had both died when they were very young.

There were times, too, when Kenelm Eyrle regretted his sternness, his lost desire for vengeance, his long years of search for the criminal whom he afterward found in his dearest friend. If he had been less vigorous, less exact, Lady Hermione might have lived. He was very lonely; the great purpose of his life was accomplished; he had found out who murdered Clarice, but in making that discovery he made many others. Clarice was not what he had thought her. He had believed her one of the noblest and truest of women; now he found out that she had committed the most dishonorable of all frauds. The whole of the sad tragedy at Aldenmere was the consequence of her fault. If she had not stolen that letter and forged another there would have been no wrong, no suffering, no murder; after all, she had but reaped what she had sown--lo, that while his pity for her never grew less, his love, the intense passionate worship he had felt for her during life and for her memory after death, decreased. He had believed her an angel--she was but a faulty woman; he had believed her a goddess--she was but an ordinary fellow-creature, with more faults and imperfections than fell to the lot of most people.

The very consciousness of this made him more lonely than ever. He had so fitted his life with a reverential and worshiping love of her, that now that love had changed its character, his life seemed empty. He had not been to the Dower House for some time, because he felt that it was not kind nor wise to add to the perplexities of Lady Pelham.

One morning a messenger came with a note for him. It said simply: “You have been so kind to me that I cannot help writing to tell you that my husband lies even now on his deathbed and has sent for me. He has promised to do me justice and to clear my good name before the world.”

A few days afterward he read in the papers that Sir Alfred Pelham was dead, and before his death he had exonerated his wife from all blame. He had sworn to her innocence, and had withdrawn the charges brought against her after begging her to pardon him.

Kenelm Eyrle read it with pleasure. He read long articles in which the law, as it exists, enabling a man to wrong his wife in so deadly a fashion, was reprobated as it deserved to be.

He often found himself wondering whether she would return to the Dower House or not; he found his thoughts returning continually to her. Her beautiful face haunted him. He remembered her indignant appeals to Heaven for the justice she was not likely to obtain from man. It was a source of keen pleasure to him when she wrote to say that she intended to return to the Dower House, the only place where she had ever known either peace or happiness. She did return. It would be long to tell how their friendship ripened into love--how gradually the living love replaced the dead one in Kenelm Eyrle’s breast.

He is not so confident now over matters; time was when he would have laughed to scorn any one who had hinted that Clarice could be not only replaced but surpassed. Now he was not so violent in his opinions nor so apt to rush into extremes. The first impetuous love of his youth was lavished on Clarice Severn; the love of his sadder, wiser manhood was given to Juliet Payton. They were married some time afterward and lived happily enough at “The Towers.” Mrs. Eyrle is very kind to Sir Ronald’s orphan children, for long after Lady Hermione’s death, Kenelm never saw them without tears in his eyes. Children of his own make “The Towers” merry with their happy laughter; life is made up of sunshine and shade. He had suffered much, but peace and rest came to him after long years. There is one duty he never omits, and that is visiting the graves of the fair women who lost their lives through an unhappy love.

THE END.

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