Chapter XIII: Book II: The Man (7)

The burial had taken place, the guests had departed, and only the members of the family remained to close up the cottage, now more than ever precious in Leighton's eyes. George and Alfred, with an assumption of brotherly feeling they probably thought due the occasion, had stepped out together to see that everything was ready for Hope's departure, and, from the window where I stood, I could see--arrant spy that I was--the nonchalant air with which either turned a wary eye upon the other as Hope's voice was heard above, speaking to little Claire. They evidently still looked upon each other as the possible object of her preference, no suspicion having reached them of the tragic secret which had made this young girl's heart inaccessible to them both. I, who knew it, and had my own place in the tragedy to which they had been blind, did not watch them long, Leighton being the more interesting figure at that moment, as, standing on his desolate hearthstone, he allowed his eyes to wander for the last time, perhaps, over the beauties of the bijou dwelling which, exquisite as it was, had been as powerless as his love to hold his roving wife in check.

He was waiting for Hope, and as this thought, with its suggestion of another and longer waiting struck my mind, a pang seized me which it took all my self-possession to hide. Waiting for--Hope! Hope, who had sat that day with his child crushed close against her breast, and a look on her face which angels might view with pity, but which I----

Ah! she was coming! I turned my face away, not that I had anything to dread from this meeting, but that I felt as if I could not bear at this moment to see the shadow veiling his melancholy countenance lift, were it ever so lightly, at the sound of the step that was shaking my own heart. But I immediately glanced back; uncertainty was worse than knowledge; and, glancing back, saw Hope, and Hope only.

She was standing in the open doorway with her arms full of roses--roses which she had brought from New York, and which she now held out towards Leighton, with a smile I hardly think he saw, so much was his attention fixed upon the flowers.

"What are these for?" he asked, advancing towards her and touching the great roses with a trembling hand.

"They are for her," said Hope, in a low tone; "for my cousin Millicent. I could not bear to have her lie with only her husband's tokens on her breast, as if she had no--no----"

He caught her to his heart. Moved to the very soul, he kissed her on the lips; then he took the flowers.

As he passed out, she tottered pale and almost swooning to where I stood trembling with my own emotions. Lifting her face, with its candid eyes and quivering lips, she faltered between her sobs:

"Have patience with me! I see now that he has never loved me and never will. Had so much as the possibility been in his breast, he could not have kissed me like that to-day."

It was not on George's arm, or Alfred's, or even Leighton's that she passed out of that little house into the new life she was to share some day with me.

* * * * *

A long time after those flowers had withered on Mille-fleurs' peaceful breast, Leighton said to me, with his hand on the head of his child:

"I shall never marry again, Outhwaite. To train this child up to be my pride as she is now my joy, will fill my life as full of happiness as is necessary to me now. And, Outhwaite, she is a quiet child,--" he stopped--I knew what thought had stayed him,--"a quiet and a loving child. Yesterday she sat for a full hour with her arms about my neck and her cheek pressed to mine, listening while I talked to her of things a child usually cares but little about. This is balm for many a hurt, Outhwaite, and if it is given to her mother to look down upon us two----"

A smile, the rarest I had ever seen, finished the sentence. Seeing it, and noting how it irradiated features which once bore the stamp of deepest melancholy, I could never again look upon Leighton Gillespie as an unhappy man.

FINIS

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