Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/62

 deserted house," continued Pembroke, unconsciously dropping his voice in sympathy with the faint woodland murmur around them. "It seems to me at Malvern that I continually hear my mother's voice, and my father's footstep, and all the pleasant family commotion I remember. And Elizabeth—Cave, no woman I ever knew suffered like my sister—and she was not the woman to suffer patiently. Old Keturah tells me that my father would have yielded at any time after he saw that her heart and life were bound up in Waring—but she would not ask him—so while I was enjoying myself three thousand miles away, and only sad when I came home to Miles, Elizabeth and my father were fighting that dreary battle. Keturah says that everybody said she was sweetly and gently patient, but all night she would walk the floor sobbing and weeping, while my father below walked his floor. It killed them both."

Cave had turned away his head. Who has watched one, dearly loved, waste and die for another, without knowing all there is of bitterness? And was Pembroke so forgetful? He was not, indeed—but he had begun telling of the things which troubled him, and because he could bear to speak of poor Elizabeth he thought that Cave could bear to hear it. But there was a pause—a pause in which Pembroke suddenly felt ashamed and heartless. Elizabeth's death was much to him—but it was everything to Cave. So Pembroke continued, rather to excuse himself, "Your cabin in