It was not so. Never, for one moment, had Agnes Marston dreamed of that impossible thing. Her love had never calculated on a return. It had only grown out of the necessity of love to give itself; and her heart had passed out of her keeping before she had known that it was gone.
Idonia was right, also, in guessing that the Duke had never entertained the faintest suspicion of the deep wealth of self-sacrificing love hidden under that quiet manner and silent face. His one venture in the matrimonial lottery had been so utter a blank that the very idea of trying another had never occurred to him, and, had it been suggested, would probably have been dismissed with a shudder.
"And so—" the thoughts of the watcher went on—"’so He leadeth them unto the haven of their desire.’ _So_! Ah, how many devious, winding paths there are, which lead up to the door of life! One He leads through pain, another through sorrow: one by loneliness and absence of human love, another by the happiness of a satisfied heart, a third through the shards of broken idols. Not often the second of those three: much oftener the first or the last. But through all the paths He brings us to the one Gate—through all the wilderness journeying, to the one City. He who has paid for us the price of His own life cannot afford to lose us. And then, ’when we have forded the Jordan, with the ark of the Lord borne before us, we eat of the fruit of the Land of Canaan that year.’"
Far back into the past years ran the "inner eye,"—back to a stately woman in robes of white, with long black hair flowing behind her. The years seemed obliterated, and Idonia Marnell stood in a turret-chamber of the Palace of Holyrood, with the mournful music of Marjory Douglas’ voice sounding in her ears.
"It cannot be much longer for me now," she said to herself in conclusion. "She has been comforted these thirty years; and I am nigh fourscore. But for thee, poor little Agnes!—the wilderness may be long yet: and unless I mistake, for thee also it will be ’the wilderness all the way.’ So the ark of the Lord go before thee, it is well. He will lead thee no whither but into the Holy Land."
"Past the pearl-gates, through the golden— When we meet His face who died, Each want full filled, new and olden, We, too, shall be satisfied."