Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty CraigHolmes, Mary Jane
General
Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty Craig
Holmes, Mary Jane
American fiction -- 19th century; Americans -- France -- Fiction; Manners and customs -- Fiction
“‘We don’t think quite the same,’ Agatha had said to her during a lucid
interval a day or two before she died. ‘We are not the same religion.
You Protestant, I _Catholique_; but you love Jesus, you ask him to
forgive, and so do I; Him and Mary, too; and He will, and you will come
to Heaven after poor Agatha some day. I sure you will, for there be now
and then some Protestant there.’
“This was quite a concession for one so devout as Agatha, and Madame
Verwest had smiled faintly when it was made, but she kissed the pallid
lips and brow where death had already set its seal, and when at last all
was over she placed a golden crucifix in the white hands folded so
meekly over the heart which would never know pain again. She telegraphed
to Haverleigh, who was dining with Eugenie when he received the message,
and who read the telegram without a word of comment, and then, lest the
jealous eyes watching him so closely should see it, he lighted a match,
and applying it to the paper saw it burn to ashes. But he could not seem
quite natural, and as soon as dinner was over he excused himself, and
started directly for the station, leaving Eugenie to speculate upon the
nature of the telegram which had so plainly affected his spirits, and
taken him from her earlier than his wont. Alas, she little guessed the
truth, or dreamed of the beautiful girl lying so cold and still in her
coffin, and on whose white face even Haverleigh’s tears fell when he
looked upon her dead, and remembered what she was when he first saw her,
a lovely peasant-girl in Normandy, singing by her father’s door. They
buried her quietly, and then Haverleigh returned to Paris and Eugenie,
while over the lonely grave Madame Verwest vowed that no other maiden
should ever come there as Agatha had come; and so, when she first heard
of Anna, she determined upon something desperate, until told that Anna
was a wife in very deed, and that no stain was on her name. Then, when
she learned who she was, and whence she came, her heart went out to the
desolate creature with a great throb of love, which strengthened every
day, and was such as a real mother feels for a suffering, ill-used
child. Many times, when listening to Anna’s talk of her New England
home, she had been tempted to tell her who she was, but had refrained
from doing so, hoping always that the day was not far distant when she
could disclose everything, and be her real self again. That day had come
at last, and with no fear of the dreadful man who had ruled her for so
many years, she told her story, and waited the verdict of her wondering
listeners.
“Anna was the first to speak. Motioning Madame Verwest to her bedside,
she wound her arms around her neck, and said:
“‘I loved you as a mother at Chateau d’Or, and am so glad to find you
are my mother truly, and the grandmother of little Arthur.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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