Rosamond, or, the Youthful Error: A Tale of Riverside; And Other StoriesHolmes, Mary Jane
General
Rosamond, or, the Youthful Error: A Tale of Riverside; And Other Stories
Holmes, Mary Jane
Fiction
For the remainder of the way we walked on in silence, until we reached
her mother's gate, where we found her husband waiting for her. Bidding
me good morning she followed him slowly up the graveled walk and I saw
her no more until the following Sabbath. It was a gloriously beautiful
morning, and at an early hour the old brick church was filled to
overflowing, for Walter had many friends, and they came together
gladly to see him made a minister of God. During the first part of the
service he was very pale, and his eye wandered often toward the large,
square pew where sat a portly man and a beautiful young woman, richly
attired in satin and jewels. It had cost her a struggle to be there,
but she felt that she must look again on one whom she had loved so
much and so deeply wronged. So she came, and the sight of him standing
there in his early manhood, his soft brown hair clustering about his
brow, and his calm, pale face wearing an expression almost angelic,
was more than she could bear, and leaning forward she kept her
countenance concealed from view until the ceremony was ended, and
Walter's clear, musical voice announced the closing hymn. Then she
raised her head, and her face, seen through the folds of her costly
veil, looked haggard and ghastly, as if a fierce storm of passion had
swept over her. By the door she paused, and when the newly-ordained
clergyman passed out, she offered him her hand, the hand which, when
he held it last, was pledged to him, There were _diamonds_ on it now--
diamonds of value rare, but their brightness was hateful to that
wretched woman, for she knew at what a fearful price they had been
bought.
They did not meet again, and only once more did Walter see her; then,
from our door, he looked out upon her as with her husband she dashed
by on horseback, her long cloth skirt almost sweeping the ground, and
the plumes of her velvet cap waving in the air.
"Mrs. Douglass is a fine rider," was all Walter said, and the tone of
his voice indicated that she was becoming to him an object of
indifference. Desperately had he fought with his affection for her,
winning the victory at last, and now the love he once had felt for her
was slowly and surely dying out, The next week, tiring of our dull
village life, Cora left us, going to Nahant, where she spent most of
the summer, and when in the winter we heard from her again, she was a
widow--the sole heir of her husband who had died suddenly, and
generously left her that for which she married him--his money,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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