but I am left here alone with
my sorrow and remorse."

"You are not really alone," she returned, soothingly. "Why do you
speak as if your wife and daughter had ceased to love you? Do you
imagine for one moment that they forget you? It would do you good to
talk to Aunt Madge; she has such wonderful ideas about all that. Some
people--people like Mrs. Tolman, our vicar's wife--laugh at her and
call her fanciful, but to me she is so real. Why should it not be
true?" she went on, with gathering excitement, "nothing that is good
can die! Love is eternal, and it is only pain and grief and sin that
can come to an end. That is what Aunt Madge says, and she does more
than say it, she lives it. Of course she misses her husband
dreadfully--they were everything to each other--but he never seems dead
like other women's husbands, if you know what I mean by that. She
seems to keep step with him somehow, and think his thoughts. I have
heard her say once that it is just as though a high wall separated
them. 'I cannot see him or hear him, but I know he is just the other
side of the wall; only he has all the sunshine, and I have to grope
alone in the shadows.'"

"Oh, she is right there; I know what it is to grope among shadows. My
dear young lady," laying his hand heavily on her arm, "Mrs. Broderick
must be a wonderful woman, and I hope to see her some day; and I am not
above caring for a good woman's prayers, but our cases are not exactly
similar."

"I daresay not," returned Olivia, hesitatingly.

"No, indeed"--and Mr. Gaythorne's heavy eyebrows drew together--"look
here, Mrs. Luttrell, what sort of comfort do you suppose a man can have
in thinking of his wife, when he knows he has acted contrary to her
desires, when he has failed to carry out even the wishes expressed on
her deathbed. What would you say to that man?"

"I would say that he must be very unhappy, and that no doubt
circumstances were too hard for him. Perhaps he did his best; but it
is not always possible for dying people to judge rightly, they may make
mistakes."

"No, it was I who made all the mistakes," and there was such anguish in
the old man's eyes as he said this, that Olivia almost started; "but
God help me, if it were to come over again I should do the same. Mrs.
Luttrell, you do not know me; it is my whim to be generous now and
then. I like to give and it costs me nothing, but I am a hard,
domineering man; when people oppose and anger me, I