wn and kissed Mrs. Cameron's forehead. The poor woman threw
her arm gratefully, lovingly round him, and burst into tears.

When she had recovered her emotion, she said,--

"And now, it is with so much lighter a heart that I can fulfil her
commission to you. But, before I place this in your hands, can you
make me one promise? Never tell Melville how she loved you. She was so
careful he should never guess that. And if he knew it was the thought of
union with him which had killed her, he would never smile again."

"You would not ask such a promise if you could guess how sacred from all
the world I hold the secret that you confide to me. By that secret
the grave is changed into an altar. Our bridals now are only a while
deferred."

Mrs. Cameron placed a letter in Kenelm's hand, and murmuring in accents
broken by a sob, "She gave it to me the day before her last," left him,
and with quick vacillating steps hurried back towards the cottage. She
now understood him, at last, too well not to feel that on opening that
letter he must be alone with the dead.

It is strange that we need have so little practical household knowledge
of each other to be in love. Never till then had Kenelm's eyes rested
upon Lily's handwriting. And he now gazed at the formal address on the
envelope with a sort of awe. Unknown handwriting coming to him from an
unknown world,--delicate, tremulous handwriting,--handwriting not of one
grown up, yet not of a child who had long to live.

He turned the envelope over and over,--not impatiently, as does the
lover whose heart beats at the sound of the approaching footstep, but
lingeringly, timidly. He would not break the seal.

He was now so near the burial-ground. Where should the first letter
ever received from her--the sole letter he ever could receive--be so
reverentially, lovingly read, as at her grave?

He walked on to the burial-ground, sat down by the grave, broke the
envelope; a poor little ring, with a poor little single turquoise,
rolled out and rested at his feet. The letter contained only these
words,--

The ring comes back to you. I could not live to marry another. I never
knew how I loved you--till, till I began to pray that you might not love
me too much. Darling! darling! good-by, darling!

LILY.

Don't let Lion ever see this, or ever know what it says to you. He is so
good, and deserves to be so happy. Do you remember the day of the ring?
Darling! darling!

CHAPTER