Family Pride; Or, Purified by SufferingHolmes, Mary Jane
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Family Pride; Or, Purified by Suffering
Holmes, Mary Jane
American fiction; Dime novels
He had come to Alnwick for the sole purpose of finding that humble
grave, of assuring himself that after life's fitful fever, Genevra
Lambert slept quietly, forgetful of the wrong once done to her by him.
It is true he had not doubted her death before, but as seeing was
believing, so now he felt sure of it, and plucking from the turf above
her a little flower growing there, he went back to Katy and sitting down
beside her with his arm around her waist, tried to devise some way of
telling her what he had promised himself he would tell her there in that
very yard, where Genevra was buried. But the task was harder now than
before. Katy was so happy with him, trusting his love so fully that he
dared not lift the veil and read to her that page hinted at once before
in Silverton, when they sat beneath the butternut tree, with the fresh
young grass springing around them. Then, she was not his wife, and the
fear that she would not be if he told her all had kept him silent, but
now she was his alone; nothing could undo that, and there, in the shadow
of the gray old church through whose aisles Genevra had been borne out
to where the rude headstone was gleaming in the English sunlight, it
seemed meet that he should tell her sad story. And Katy would have
forgiven him then, for not a shadow of regret had darkened her life
since it was linked with his, and in her perfect love she could have
pardoned much. But Wilford did not tell. It was not needful; he made
himself believe--not necessary for her ever to know that once he met a
maiden called Genevra, almost as beautiful as she, but never so beloved.
No, never. Wilford said that truly, when that night he bent over his
sleeping Katy, comparing her face with Genevra's, and his love for her
with his love for Genevra.
"That was a boyish fancy, this love of mature years," and Wilford
pressed a kiss upon Katy's pure forehead, showing so white in the
moonlight.
Wilford was very fond of his girlish wife and very proud of her, too,
when strangers paused, as they often did, to look back after her. Thus
far nothing had arisen to mar the happiness of his first weeks of
married life; nothing except the letters from Silverton, over which Katy
always cried, until he sometimes wished that the family could not write.
But they could and they did; even Aunt Betsy inclosed in Helen's letter
a note, wonderful both in orthography and composition, and concluding
with the remark that she would be glad when Catherine returned and was
settled in a home of her own, as she would then have a new place to
visit.
There was a dark frown on Wilford's face, and for a moment he felt
tempted to withhold the note from Katy, but this he could not do then,
so he gave it into her hands, watching her as with burning cheeks, she
read it through, and asking her at its close why she looked so red.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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