“All the Rivers run into the Sea.”

For some days Violet’s return seemed to have a happy effect upon the invalid. Never had daughter been more devoted, more loving, fuller of sweet cares and consolations for a dying mother, than this daughter. Seeing the mother and child together in this supreme hour, no onlooker could have divined that these two had been ever less fondly united than mother and child should be. The feeble and fading woman seemed to lean on the strong bright girl, to gain a reflected strength from her fulness of life and vigour. It was as if Vixen, with her shining hair and fair young face, brought healthful breezes into the sickly perfumed atmosphere of the invalid’s rooms.
Roderick Vawdrey had a hard time of it during these days of sadness and suspense. He could not deny the right of his betrothed to devote all her time and thought to a dying mother; and yet, having but newly won her for his very own, after dreary years of constraint and severance, he longed for her society as lover never longed before; or at least he thought so. He hung about the Abbey House all day, heedless of the gloomy looks he got from Captain Winstanley, and of the heavy air of sadness that pervaded the house, and was infinitely content and happy when he was admitted to Mrs. Winstanley’s boudoir to take an afternoon cup of tea, and talk for half-an-hour or so, in subdued tones, with mother and daughter.
“I am very glad that things have happened as they have, Roderick,” Mrs. Winstanley said languidly; “though I’m afraid it would make your poor mamma very unhappy if she could know about it. She had so set her heart on your marrying Lady Mabel.”
“Forgetting that it was really my heart which was concerned in the business,” said Rorie. “Dear Mabel was wise enough to show us all the easiest way out of our difficulties. I sent her my mother’s emerald cross and earrings, the day before yesterday, with as pretty a letter as I could write. I think it was almost poetical.”
“And those emeralds of Lady Jane Vawdrey’s are very fine,” remarked Mrs. Winstanley. “I don’t think there is a feather in one of the stones.”
“It was almost like giving away your property, wasn’t it, Vixen?” said Rorie, looking admiringly at his beloved. “But I have a lot of my mother’s jewels for you, and I wanted to send Mabel something, to show her that I was not ungrateful.”
“You acted very properly, Rorie; and as to jewellery, you know very well I don’t care a straw for it.”
“It is a comfort to me to know you will have Lady Jane’s pearl necklace,” murmured Mrs. Winstanley. “It will go so well with my diamond locket. Ah, Rorie, I wish I had been strong enough to see to Violet’s trousseau. It is dreadful to think that it may have to be made by a provincial dressmaker, and with no one to supervise and direct.”
“Dearest mother, you are going to supervise everything,” exclaimed Vixen. “I shall not think of being married till you are well and strong again.”
“That will be never,” sighed the invalid.
Upon this point she was very firm. They all tried — husband, daughter, and friends — to delude her with false hopes, thinking thus to fan the flame of life and keep the brief candle burning a little longer. She was not deceived. She felt herself gradually, painlessly sinking. She complained but little; much less than in the days when her ailments had been in some part fanciful; but she knew very surely that her day was done.
“It is very sweet to have you with me, Violet,” she said. “Your goodness, and Conrad’s loving attentions, make me very happy. I feel almost as if I should like to live a few years longer.”
“Only almost, mother darling?” exclaimed Violet reproachfully.
“I don’t know, dear. I have such a weary feeling; as if life at the very best were not worth the trouble it cost us. I shouldn’t mind going on living if I could always lie here, and take no trouble about anything, and be nursed and waited upon, and have you or Conrad always by my side — but to get well again, and to have to get up, and go about among other people, and take up all the cares of life — no dear, I am much too weary for that. And then if I could get well to-morrow, old age and death would still be staring me in the face. I could not escape them. No, love, it is much better to die now, before I am very old, or quite hideous; even before my hair is gray.”
She took up one of the soft auburn tresses from her pillow, and looked at it, half sadly.
“Your dear papa used to admire my hair, Violet,” she said. “There are a few gray hairs, but you would hardly notice them; but my hair is much thinner than it used to be, and I don’t think I could ever have made up my mind to wear false hair. It never quite matches one’s own. I have seen Lady Ellangowan wearing three distinct heads of hair; and yet gentlemen admire her.”
Mrs. Winstanley was always at her best during those afternoon tea-drinkings. The strong tea revived her; Roderick’s friendly face and voice cheered her. They took her back to the remote past, to the kind Squire’s day of glory, which she remembered as the happiest time of her life; even now, when her second husband was doing all things possible to prove his sincerity and devotion. She had never been completely happy in this second marriage. There had always been a flavour of remorse mingled with her cup of joy; the vague consciousness that she had done a foolish thing, and that the world — her little world within a radius of twenty miles — was secretly laughing at her.
“Do you remember the day we came home from our honeymoon, Conrad,” she said to her husband, as he sat by her in the dusk one evening, sad and silent, “when there was no carriage to meet us, and we had to come home in a fly? It was an omen, was it not?”
“An omen of what, dearest?”
“That all things were not to go well with us in our married life; that we were not to be quite happy.”
“Have you not been happy, Pamela? I have tried honestly to do my duty to you.”
“I know you............