Madeline by Mary Jane Holmes

Hours went by, and the hands of the clock pointed to twelve, ere Maddy compelled herself to hear the story Guy had come to tell. She had thrust him from her at first, speaking to him of _Lucy_, his wife, and Guy had answered her, "I have no wife-I never had one. Lucy is in Heaven; " and that was all Maddy knew until the great shock had spent itself in tears and sobs, which became almost convulsions as she tried to realize the fact that Lucy Atherstone was dead; that the bridal robe about which she had written with girlish frankness proved to be her shroud, and that her head that night was not pillowed on Guy's arm, but resting under English turf and beneath an English sky. She could listen at last, but her breath came in panting gasps; while Guy told her how, on the very morning of the bridal, Lucy had greeted him with her usual bright smile, appearing and looking better than he had seen her look since he reached her mother's home; how for an hour they sat together alone in a little room sacred to her, because years before it was there he confessed his love.

Seated on a low ottoman, with her golden head lying on his lap, she had this morning told him, in her artless way, how much she loved him, and how hard it sometimes was to make her love for the creature second to her love for the Creator; told him she was not faultless, and asked that when he found how erring and weak she was, he would bear with her frailties as she would bear with his; talked with him, too, of Maddy Clyde, confessing, in a soft, low tone, how once or twice a pang of jealousy had wrung her heart when she read his praises of his pupil. But she had conquered that; she had prayed it all away, and now, next to her own sister, she loved Maddy Clyde.