A Heart's Bitterness — page 52: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

44. : A HEART'S BITTERNESS, singing nor a step was heard in the great cemetery, and in _ the sudden hush Violet seemed the only living thing. No one else was in sight; the groom and maid had lin- © gered in a broader sunlight. | Violet sighed. As an echo of her sigh a voice fell on her ear: *¢ Violet-—Lady Leigh !’ It was Kenneth Keith. She turned to him, and her eyes were full of tears. “T am afraid I startle you—that I disturb you,” he said. ‘“No,” replied Violet, simply. ‘‘1 wanted to see you. Let us sit down on that bench. I was thinking that all one’s troubles seem short, when they are looked back on, and that people should have courage to endure anything, when they consider that it will not last forever. I have made you unhappy by not- trusting you, by thinking that you had forgotten me, and were untrue to all you had said. If I had only waited on and on, in trust, until we met, then we—you—might have been happy. Sut, you see, I had heard so much of how false and forgetful people were, I thought you were, too—and that explains me.” > This ingenuous, child-like, if stumbling confession, went straight to Lord Keith’s heart, and aroused all his chival- rous tenderness for this sweet young creature. “Tt was not your fault,” he said. ‘‘ We have both been victims of very unhappy circumstances. If you will hear me, I would like to tell you my share of our trouble in a few words.” | Violet dropped her eyes; she did not speak, but her lis- ay : tening attitude consented. ‘* When I met you in Lincolnshire and loved you, I did not know that you were the greatest heiress of England. I only knew that you embodied my ideal—were all the hope, _. joy, poetry of my life, in one fair form. When I returned to Oxford I wrote, as we had agreed, again and again. _ But, at the same time, I began to feel that all this manner - of concealment of our love and correspondence was wrong. My chief wish was to marry you as soon as you were of age to marry, and I saw that it was only honorable-and right to make my intentions known. Meanwhile.I had no word from you, and I became miserably unhappy. My tutor was my cousin, a young curate, who now has the living at Keith Castle. He was always my best friend, and»seeing that I (e(0) EComicbooks