further and further away from any results that could have led
even to a suspicion of the truth. She could only believe when she
wrote to me on leaving England--and I could only believe when I
read her letter--that we had first met at the river, and that our
divergent destinies had ended in parting us forever.

Reading her farewell letter in later days by the light of my
matured experience, I note how remarkably Dame Dermody's faith in
the purity of the tie that united us as kindred spirits was
justified by the result.

It was only when my unknown Mary was parted from Van Brandt--in
other words, it was only when she was a pure spirit--that she
felt my influence over her as a refining influence on her life,
and that the apparition of her communicated with me in the
visible and perfect likeness of herself. On my side, when was it
that I dreamed of her (as in Scotland), or felt the mysterious
warning of her presence in my waking moments (as in Shetland)?
Always at the time when my heart opened most tenderly toward her
and toward others--when my mind was most free from the bitter
doubts, the self-seeking aspirations, which degrade the divinity
within us. Then, and then only, my sympathy with her was the
perfect sympathy which holds its fidelity unassailable by the
chances and changes, the delusions and temptations, of mortal
life.


I am writing prematurely of the time when the light came to me.
My narrative must return to the time when I was still walking in
darkness.

Absorbed in watching over the closing days of my mother's life, I
found in the performance of this sacred duty my only consolation
under the overthrow of my last hope of marriage with Mrs. Van
Brandt. By slow degrees my mother felt the reviving influences of
a quiet life and a soft, pure air. The improvement in her health
could, as I but too well knew, be only an improvement for a time.
Still, it was a relief to see her free from pain, and innocently
happy in the presence of her son. Excepting those hours of the
day and night which were dedicated to repose, I was never away
from her. To this day I remember, with a tenderness which
attaches to no other memories of mine, the books that I read to
her, the sunny corner on the seashore where I sat with her, the
games of cards that we played together, the little trivial gossip
that amused her when she was strong enough for nothing else.
These are my imperishable relics; these are the deeds of my life
that I shall love best to look back on, when the all-infolding
shadows of death are closing round me.

In the hours when I was alone, my thoughts--occupying themselves
mostly among the persons and events of the past--wandered back,
many and many a time, to Shetland and Miss Dunross.

My haunting doubt as to what the black veil had really hidden
from me was no longer accompanied by a feeling of horror when it
now recurred to my mind. The more vividly my later remembrances
of Miss Dunross were associated with the idea of an unutterable
bodily affliction, the higher the noble nature of the woman
seemed to rise in my esteem. For the first time since I had left
Shetland, the temptation now came to me to disregard the
injunction which her father had laid on me at parting. When I
thought again of the stolen kiss in the dead of night; when I
recalled the appearance of the frail white hand, waving to me
through the dark curtains its last farewell; and when there
mingled with these memories the later remembrance of what my
mother had suspected, and of what Mrs. Van Brandt had seen in her
dream--the longing in me to find a means of assuring Miss Dunross
that she still held her place apart in my memory and my heart was
more than mortal fortitude could resist. I was pledged in honor
not to return to Shetland, and not to write. How to communicate
with her secretly, in some other way, was the constant question
in my mind as the days went on. A hint to enlighten me was all
that I wanted; and, as the irony of circumstances ordered it, my
mother was the person who gave me the hint.

We still spoke, at intervals, of Mrs. Van Brandt. Watching me on
those occasions when we were in the company of friends and
acquaintances at Torquay, my mother plainly discerned that no
other woman, whatever her attractions might be, could take the
place in my heart of the woman whom I had lost. Seeing but one
prospect of happiness for me, she steadily refused to abandon the
idea of my marriage. When a woman has owned that she loves a man
(so my mother used to express her opinion), it is that man's
fault, no matter what the obstacles may be, if he fails to make
her his wife. Reverting to this view in various ways, she pressed
it on my consideration one day in these words:

"There is one drawback, George, to my happiness in being here
with you. I am an obstacle in the way of your communicating with
Mrs. Van Brandt."

"You forget," I said, "that she has left England without telling
me where to find her."

"If you were free from the incumbrance of your mother, my dear,
you would easily find her. Even as things are, you might surely
write to her. Don't mistake my motives, George. If I had any hope
of your forgetting her--if I saw you only moderately attracted by
one or other of the charming women whom we know here--I should
say, let us never speak again or think again of Mrs. Van Brandt.


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