When the first meeting was over, when our quiet and composure of other days began gradually to return to us, I saw something in my mother's face which told me that a secret oppression lay heavy on her heart. There was more than love -- there was sorrow in the anxious eyes that looked on me so tenderly -- there was pity in the kind hand that slowly and fondly strengthened its hold on mine. We had no concealments from each other. She knew how the hope of my life had been wrecked -- she knew why I had left her. It was on my lips to ask as composedly as I could if any letter had come for me from Miss Halcombe, if there was any news of her sister that I might hear. But when I looked in my mother's face I lost courage to put the question even in that guarded form. I could only say, doubtingly and restrainedly --
‘You have something to tell me.'
My sister, who had been sitting opposite to us, rose suddenly without a word of explanation -- rose and left the room.
My mother moved closer to me on the sofa and put her arms round my neck.
Those fond arms trembled -- the tears flowed fast over the faithful loving face.
‘Walter!' she whispered, ‘my own darling! my heart is heavy for you, Oh, my son I my son I try to remember that I am still left!'
My head sank on her bosom. She had said all in saying those words.
It was the morning of the third day since my return -- the morning of the sixteenth of October.
I had remained with them at the cottage -- I had tried hard not to embitter the happiness of my return to them as it was embittered to me. I had done all man could to rise after the shock, and accept my life resignedly -- to let my great sorrow come in tenderness to my heart, and not in despair.
It was useless and hopeless. No tears soothed my aching eyes, no relief came to me from my sister's sympathy or my mother's love.
On that third morning I opened my heart to them. At last the words passed my lips which I had longed to speak on the day when my mother told me of her death.
‘Let me go away alone for a little while,' I said. ‘I shall bear it better when I have looked once more at the place where I first saw her -- when I have knelt and prayed by the grave where they have laid her to rest.'
I departed on my journey -- my journey to the grave of Laura Fairlie.
It was a quiet autumn afternoon when I stopped at the solitary station, and set forth alone on foot by the well-remembered road. The waning sun was shining faintly through thin white clouds -- the air was warm and still -- the peacefulness of the lonely country was overshadowed and saddened by the influence of the falling year.
I reached the moor -- I stood again on the brow of the hill -- I looked on along the path -- and there were the familiar garden trees in the distance, the clear sweeping semicircle of the drive, the high white walls of Limmeridge House. The chances and changes, the wanderings and dangers of months and months past, all shrank and shrivelled to nothing in my mind. It was like yesterday since my feet had last trodden the fragrant heathy ground. I thought I should see her coming to meet me, with her little straw hat shading her face, her simple dress fluttering in the air, and her well-filled sketch-book ready in her hand.
Oh, death, thou hast thy sting! oh, grave, thou hast thy victory!
I turned aside, and there below me in the glen was the lonesome grey church, the Porch where I had waited for the coming of the woman in white, the hills encircling the quiet burial-ground, the brook bubbling cold over its stony bed. There was the marble cross, fair and white, at the head of the tomb -- the tomb that now rose over mother and daughter alike.
I approached the grave. I crossed once more the low stone stile, and bared my head as I touched the sacred ground. Sacred to gentleness and goodness, sacred to reverence and grief.