“They traveled several months longer, and when at length on their return to London, only three or four months before I arrived there, she learned that I had not perished, but was soon expected back, the shock nearly killed her a second time. Her husband was all kindness and attention, took her immediately away again, and showered everything that wealth could buy upon her; and after a time children were born to her, and those new ties aroused her to her sense of duty as a mother. I never saw her, for I had not courage to look upon her dear face, knowing that she was the wife of another; for I never ceased to love her, with an affection that amounted to idolatry. They told me that she had two children—two noble boys, one of them resembling her, the other his father—that she was a tender, faithful mother, and very much beloved by every one who knew her. “That was forty years ago, Star, and for thirty I have not heard one word concerning either her or her family; but I have lived my life out alone; I could never take any one to my broken heart; and perhaps, if your belief is true, my child, and I can ever be made clearly to see it, I may find my lost love somewhere in the great future; but I do not need to tell you that my past has been one long season of longing and regret, of sadness and loneliness.” His voice broke, his lips quivered painfully, and it seemed for a moment as if he must break down utterly. Star softly slipped one of her small hands into his, and the sympathetic little act comforted him greatly. His closed over it in a strong, yet tender clasp. “You pity the old man’s weakness, don’t you, dear?” he said, with a sad smile; “but it is not easy to open the secret chambers of one’s heart when they have been closed for forty years. “When I first saw you,” he continued, after a moment, “there was something in your face that touched me—a light in your eye, a sheen on your hair, that somehow smote a familiar chord in my heart. I watched you, although you were not aware of it, and felt sorry for you during that dreadful storm at sea; for your white face and great, startled eyes appealed to me as nothing had done for many a year. But I would not yield to it. I had shut my heart to every one; I had vowed that I would never love any one again, and I mistrusted every one who sought to win me to a better mood. But when that lurch of the boat threw you directly into my arms, and you clung to me in such a helpless way, I could not resist you, and some good angel prompted me to gather you close to me and make you rest upon me. When you told me your name, the shock nearly unmanned me—‘Star Rosevelt Gladstone,’ you said—and I knew as well as if I had been told, that you were in some way connected with _my_ lost Star, and I watched over you all the night through, feeling almost as if some sweet spirit had been sent from her to me, to give me a little ray of comfort at the end of my long, loveless life.