At last they reached the harbor.  A friend met them who had been warned of their arrival by telegraph from Halifax.  He met them to tell them of ill news; they would rather hear it from him.

The Nereid was lost,—­lost just outside the Bay,—­the vessel, the crew, all the passengers,—­in a fearful storm of a week ago, the very storm that had delayed their own passage.

“Let us go home,” said Harry.  “Where is it?” asked Ernest.  “Why were we not lost in the same storm?” cried Harry.  “How could we pass quietly along the very place?”

The brothers went home into the old room.  Kindly hands had been caring for it,—­had tried to place all things in their accustomed order.  Even the canary had come back from Aunt Martha’s parlor.

There was a letter on the table.  Harry saw that only.  It was Violet’s letter, which she wrote on leaving Leghorn.  He tore it from its cover,—­then gave it, opened, to Ernest.

“You must read it for me,—­I cannot!” and he hurried into an inner room.

Ernest held the letter helplessly and looked round.  For him there was a double desolation in the room.  The books stood untouched upon the shelves; his mother’s work-basket was laid aside.  Suddenly there came back to him the memory of that last day at home,—­the joyous spring-day in March,—­which was so full of gay sounds.  The clatter of the dropping ice, the happy laugh of the water breaking into freedom, the song of the canary, now hushed by the presence of strangers,—­the thoughts of these made gay even that moment of parting.  And with them came the image of the dear mother and of the warm-hearted Violet.  Oh, the parting was happier than the return!  Now there was silence in the room, and absence,—­such unuse about all things,—­such a terrible stillness!  He longed for a voice, for a sound, for words.

In his hands were words, her own, her last words.  Half unconsciously he read through the letter, as if unwillingly too, because it might not belong to him.  Yet they were her words, and for him.

“DEAR HARRY,—­

“Do you know that I love him?—­that I love Ernest?  I ought to have known it, just because I did not know how to confess it to myself or you.  I thought he was above us both; and when I pitied myself that he could not love me, I pitied you, and my pity, perhaps, I mistook for love of you.  Perhaps I mistook it, for I know not but I was conscious all the time of loving him.  I learned the truth when I stood by the side of his Psyche, and saw, that, though she hovered from the marble, though he had won fame and success, he was unsatisfied still.  It is true, he must always remain unsatisfied, because it is his genius that thirsts, and it is my ideal that he loves, not me.  But he is dying; he asks for me.  You never could refuse him what he asked.  You will give me to him?  If you were not so generous and noble-hearted, I could not ask you both for your pardon and your pity.  But you are both, and will do with me as you will.