way. Here Katy also came,
rambling with him through the village graveyard where slept the dust of
centuries, the gray, mossy tombstones bearing date backward for more
than a hundred years, their quaint inscriptions both puzzling and
amusing Katy, who studied them by the hour.

One quiet summer morning, however, when the heat was unusually great,
she felt too listless to wander about, and so sat upon the grass,
listening to the birds as they sang above her head, while Wilford, at
some distance from her, stood leaning against a tree and thinking sad,
regretful thoughts, as his eye rested upon the rough headstone at his
feet.

"Genevra Lambert, aged twenty-two," was the lettering upon it, and as he
read it a feeling of reproach was in his heart, while he said: "I hope I
am not glad to know that she is dead."

He had come to Alnwick for the sole purpose of finding that humble
grave, of assuring himself that after life's fitful fever, Genevra
Lambert slept quietly, forgetful of the wrong once done to her by him.
It is true he had not doubted her death before, but as seeing was
believing, so now he felt sure of it, and plucking from the turf above
her a little flower growing there, he went back to Katy and sitting down
beside her with his arm around her waist, tried to devise some way of
telling her what he had promised himself he would tell her there in that
very yard, where Genevra was buried. But the task was harder now than
before. Katy was so happy with him, trusting his love so fully that he
dared not lift the veil and read to her that page hinted at once before
in Silverton, when they sat beneath the butternut tree, with the fresh
young grass springing around them. Then, she was not his wife, and the
fear that she would not be if he told her all had kept him silent, but
now she was his alone; nothing could undo that, and there, in the shadow
of the gray old church through whose aisles Genevra had been borne out
to where the rude headstone was gleaming in the English sunlight, it
seemed meet that he should tell her sad story. And Katy would have
forgiven him then, for not a shadow of regret had darkened her life
since it was linked with his, and in her perfect love she could have
pardoned much. But Wilford did not tell. It was not needful; he made
himself believe--not necessary for her ever to know that once he met a
maiden called Genevra, almost as beautiful as she, but never so beloved.
No, never. Wilford said that