The evening beam that smiles the clouds away.—Bride of Abydos.
Morton rode along the edge of the lake at Matherton. He passed under the shadowy verdure of the pines, and approached the old family mansion of the Leslies. It was years since he had seen it. His imprisonment, his escape, his dreary greeting home, all lay between. He was the same man, yet different;—with a mind calmed by experience, and strong by action and endurance; an ardor which had lost all of its intoxication, but none of its force; and which, as the past and the present rose upon his thoughts, was tempered with a melancholy which had in it nothing of pain.
The hall door stood open, as if to welcome him. The roses and the laurels were in bloom; the grass, ripe for the scythe, was waving in the meadow; and, by glimpses between the elm and maple boughs, the lake, crisped in the June wind, was sparkling with the sunlight.
Morton dismounted; his foot was on the porch; but he had no time for thought; for a step sounded in the hall, and Edith met him on the threshold.
* * * * *
That evening, at sunset, Miss Leslie and Morton stood on the brink of the lake, at the foot of the garden. It was the spot which had been most sweet and most bitter in the latter's recollections.
"Do you remember, Edith, when we last stood here?"
"How could I ever forget?"
"The years that have passed since are like a nightmare. I could believe them so, but that I feel their marks."
"And I, as well; we were boy and girl then."
"At least, I was a boy; and, do you know, I find you different from what I had pictured you."
"Should I be sorry for it, or glad?"
"I had pictured you as I saw you last, very calm, very resolute, very sad; but you are like the breaking of a long, dull storm. The sun shines again, and the world glows the brighter for past rain and darkness."
"Could I have welcomed you home with a sad face? Could I be calm and cold, now that I have found what I thought was lost forever?—when the ashes of my life have kindled into flame again? Because I, and others, have known sorrow, should I turn my face into a homily, and be your lifelong memento mori?"
"It is a brave heart that can hide a deep thought under a smile."
"And a weak one that is always crouching among the shadows."
"There is an abounding spirit of faith in you; the essence which makes heroes, from Joan of Arc to Jeanie Deans."
"I know no one with faith like yours, which could hold to you through all your years of living burial."
"Mine! it was wrenched to its uttermost roots. I thought the world was given over to the devil."
"But that was only for the moment."