It was on the evening of this Saturday that Arthur gathered up his courage and asked Angela to come and walk through the ruins with him.  Angela hesitated a little; the shadow of something about to happen had fallen on her mind; but the extraordinary beauty of the evening, to say nothing of the prospect of his company, turned the scale in Arthur’s favour.

It was one of those nights of which, if we are lucky, we get some five or six in the course of an English summer.  The moon was at her full, and, the twilight ended, she filled the heavens with her light.  Every twig and blade of grass showed out as clearly as in the day, but looked like frosted silver.  The silence was intense, and so still was the air that the sharp shadows of the trees were motionless upon the grass, only growing with the growing hours.  It was one of those nights that fill us with an indescribable emotion, bringing us into closer companionship with the unseen than ever does the garish, busy day.  In such an hour, we can sometimes feel, or think that we can feel, other presences around us, and involuntarily we listen for the whisper of the wings and the half-forgotten voices of our beloved.

On this particular evening some such feeling was stirring in Angela’s heart as with slow steps she led the way into the little village churchyard, a similar spot to that which is to be found in many a country parish, except that, the population being very small, there were but few recent graves.  Most of the mounds had no head-stones to recall the names of the neglected dead, but here and there were dotted discoloured slabs, some sunk a foot or two into the soil, a few lying prone upon it, and the remainder thrown by the gradual subsidence of their supports into every variety of angle, as though they had been suddenly halted in the maddest whirl of a grotesque dance of death.

Picking her way through these, Angela stopped under an ancient yew, and, pointing to one of the two shadowed mounts to which the moonlight scarcely struggled, said, in a low voice,

“That is my mother’s grave.”

It was a modest tenement enough, a little heap of close green turf, surrounded by a railing, and planted with sweet-williams and forget-me-nots.  At its head was placed a white marble cross, on which Arthur could just distinguish the words “Hilda Caresfoot,” and the date of death.

He was about to speak, but she stopped him with a gentle movement, and then, stepping forward to the head of the railing, she buried her face in her hands, and remained motionless.  Arthur watched her with curiosity.  What, he wondered, was passing in the mind of this strange and beautiful woman, who had grown up so sweet and pure amidst moral desolation, like a white lily blooming alone on the black African plains in winter?  Suddenly she raised her head, and saw the inquiring look he bent upon her.  She came towards him, and, in that sweet, half-pleading voice which was one of her greatest charms, she said,