The young rector’s eyes were streaming with tears, as he reached over and clasped the sick man’s hands in his. “You will meet her,” he said with a choked voice. “I heard this same story, but without names, from Berene Dumont’s dying lips more than two years ago. And just as Berene disappeared from you—so her daughter disappeared from me; and, God help me, dear father—doubly now my father, I crushed out my great passion for the glorious natural child of your love, to marry the loveless, wretched and _unnatural_ child of your marriage.”
The sick man started up on his couch, his eyes flaming, his cheeks glowing with sudden lustre.
“My child—the natural child of Berene’s love and mine, you say; oh, my God, speak and tell me what you mean; speak before I die of joy so terrible it is like anguish.”
So then it became the rector’s turn to take the part of narrator. When the story was ended, Preston Cheney lay weeping like a woman on his couch; the first tears he had shed since his mother died and left him an orphan of ten.
“Berene living and dying almost within reach of my arms—almost within sound of my voice!” he cried. “Oh, why did I not find her before the grave closed between us?—and why did no voice speak from that grave to tell me when I held my daughter’s hand in mine?—my beautiful child, no wonder my heart went out to her with such a gush of tenderness; no wonder I was fired with unaccountable anger and indignation when Mabel and Alice spoke unkindly of her. Do you remember how her music stirred me? It was her mother’s heart speaking to mine through the genius of our child.
“Arthur, you must find her—you must find her for me! If it takes my whole fortune I must see my daughter, and clasp her in my arms before I die.”
But this happiness was not to be granted to the dying man. Overcome by the excitement of this new emotion, he grew weaker and weaker as the next few days passed, and at the end of the fifth day his spirit took its flight, let us hope to join its true mate.
It had been one of his dying requests to have his body taken to Beryngford and placed beside that of Judge Lawrence.
The funeral services took place in the new and imposing church edifice which had been constructed recently in Beryngford. The quiet interior village had taken a leap forward during the last few years, and was now a thriving city, owing to the discovery of valuable stone quarries in its borders.