Family Pride eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 685 pages of information about Family Pride.

Family Pride eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 685 pages of information about Family Pride.

If Katy’s letters, written, one on board the steamer and another from London, were to be trusted, she was as nearly perfectly happy as a young bride well can be, and the people at the farmhouse felt themselves more and more kindly disposed toward Wilford Cameron with each letter received.  They were going soon into the northern part of England, and from thence into Scotland, Katy wrote from London, and two weeks after found them comfortably settled at the inn at Alnwick, near to Alnwick Castle.  Wilford had seemed very anxious to get there, leaving London before Katy was quite ready to leave, and hurrying across the country until Alnwick was reached.  He had been there before, years ago, he said, but no one seemed to recognize him, though all paid due respect to the distinguished-looking American and his beautiful young wife.  An entrance into Alnwick Castle was easily obtained, and Katy felt that all her girlish dreams of grandeur and magnificence were more than realized here in this home of the Percys, where ancient and modern styles of architecture and furnishing were so blended together.  She would never tire of that place, she thought, but Wilford’s taste led him elsewhere, and he took more delight, it would appear, in wandering around St. Mary’s Church, which stood upon a hill commanding a view of the castle and of the surrounding country for miles away.  Here Katy also came, rambling with him through the village graveyard where slept the dust of centuries, the gray, mossy tombstones bearing date backward for more than a hundred years, their quaint inscriptions both puzzling and amusing Katy, who studied them by the hour.

One quiet summer morning, however, when the heat was unusually great, she felt too listless to wander about, and so sat upon the grass, listening to the birds as they sang above her head, while Wilford, at some distance from her, stood leaning against a tree and thinking sad, regretful thoughts, as his eye rested upon the rough headstone at his feet.

“Genevra Lambert, aged twenty-two,” was the lettering upon it, and as he read it a feeling of reproach was in his heart, while he said:  “I hope I am not glad to know that she is dead.”

He had come to Alnwick for the sole purpose of finding that humble grave, of assuring himself that after life’s fitful fever, Genevra Lambert slept quietly, forgetful of the wrong once done to her by him.  It is true he had not doubted her death before, but as seeing was believing, so now he felt sure of it, and plucking from the turf above her a little flower growing there, he went back to Katy and sitting down beside her with his arm around her waist, tried to devise some way of telling her what he had promised himself he would tell her there in that very yard, where Genevra was buried.  But the task was harder now than before.  Katy was so happy with him, trusting his love so fully that he dared not lift the veil and read to her that page hinted at once before

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Project Gutenberg
Family Pride from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.