Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/91

Rh not the niceties of the law. After a time, they too had a little daughter. But after a year or two the mother learned that, though she was a mother, she was not a wife; and she died, but sent the child to him. By and by the man's wife died also, and he was left with his two daughters. He educated them both; but he gave the elder precedence over the younger, who, knowing neither whence she came nor that her companion was her sister, accepted her position willingly and joyfully, as was her nature.

"So they grew up together, and loved each other well. But one morning the elder took the younger to her room, and threw her arms round her neck, and kissed her, and then she showed her some papers she had found, which revealed all the secret. 'You are my sister,' she said,—'my darling sister; and, whatever any one may say or do, you are my equal, and whatever I have is yours. No one shall be unjust to you while I live, and whoever is your enemy is mine too. You shall have no shame that I will not share, and I will accept no honor that is not given to you as well!'—After that, do you need to be told that I loved my sister better than ever?—better than myself?"

Of course I had perceived from the first that the story she was telling was her own story; nevertheless, the passionate emphasis she gave to the last sentence startled me. Up to that time, she had spoken with a curious imaginative languor, as if she were following in fancy the thread of a complication in which she felt no vital concern; but this demeanor vanished in a moment: she sat erect, and threw her very life into the words. And then, too, a foreglimpse of what was to come flashed upon me, and I felt, rather than saw, the fatal error I had made.

"At last some one came to court her,—an elderly and reserved man, but wealthy; and she obeyed her father, and married him. She would have taken me to live with her, but I was needed at home: her father had begun to realize that he was mine too, and to value me. She wrote me many letters. Her husband's affairs kept him much away from her. Then for a time—for some months—she did not write. I knew there was mischief on foot; and when, at last, her letter came, I said nothing to any one, but left home that night, and was with her the next day.

"She was alone: husband and lover both had abandoned her. She told me what her life had been. There were two chapters in it: first she had been sold for money; then she had been betrayed for love. She told me all: it will never be told again; God knows it, and that is enough, for He only can understand, and forgive,—and punish. I comforted her as much as a broken heart can be comforted; and