lips moved. She bent her head to listen, and caught the words, “God bless my poor child; God bless thee, Ger——,” his lips still moved, but there came no audible sound.
Poor Gertrude! She was now alone!
At twilight, when Gertrude entered the lonely grave-yard, she met Howard Beauchamp just emerging from an avenue of cedars. He paused for a moment, and then advancing said—
“We were friends once; may I hope that we still are?”
Gertrude could not speak, but she stretched out her hand to answer his greeting.
“Time has brought many changes to both of us,” he continued; “in this place of graves, your sainted mother and my revered father sleeps; but since I have become an orphan—alone and desolate in the world, I have heard but little of you, excepting of your marriage; I trust for your sake, Gertrude, that the mourning garments which you now wear are not a widow’s weeds.”
Gertrude Leslie looked in surprise upon him as she answered—
“I have never been married, Howard; it is for my father that I mourn.”
A sudden ray of joy illuminated his fine face, then died away as he said in sad, low tones—
“And you are an orphan, too; but oh! not so desolate an one, I trust, as myself.”
“And why should I not be, Howard?—the blow which deprived me of my father left me penniless—well-nigh friendless; but you in your cousin’s love have found a happiness which I can never hope.”
She saw the crimson glow which spread over the marble features of her companion.
“Then you too know of her unfortunate attachment—poor Ellen! I have tried in vain to feel more than a brother’s attachment to her; the memory of my youthful love, Gertrude, is too strong to bear to be replaced, even in imagination,” said Howard, as he bent his dark eyes searchingly upon hers.
