“Amen, amen! dear Henry,” said the lady, pressing his arm.  “I knew it.  Mr. Atterbury, of St. Bride’s, who was called to him, told me so.  And I thanked God, too, and in my prayers ever since remembered it.”

“You had spared me many a bitter night, had you told me sooner,” Mr. Esmond said.

“I know it, I know it,” she answered, in a tone of such sweet humility, as made Esmond repent that he should ever have dared to reproach her.  “I know how wicked my heart has been; and I have suffered too, my dear.  I confessed to Mr. Atterbury—­I must not tell any more.  He—­I said I would not write to you or go to you—­and it was better even that having parted, we should part.  But I knew you would come back—­I own that.  That is no one’s fault.  And to-day, Henry, in the anthem, when they sang it, ’When the Lord turned the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream,’ I thought, yes, like them that dream—­them that dream.  And then it went, ’They that sow in tears shall reap in joy; and he that goeth forth and weepeth, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him;’ I looked up from the book, and saw you.  I was not surprised when I saw you.  I knew you would come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine round your head.”

She smiled an almost wild smile as she looked up at him.  The moon was up by this time, glittering keen in the frosty sky.  He could see, for the first time now clearly, her sweet careworn face.

“Do you know what day it is?” she continued.  “It is the 29th of December—­it is your birthday!  But last year we did not drink it—­no, no.  My lord was cold, and my Harry was likely to die:  and my brain was in a fever; and we had no wine.  But now—­now you are come again, bringing your sheaves with you, my dear.”  She burst into a wild flood of weeping as she spoke; she laughed and sobbed on the young man’s heart, crying out wildly, “bringing your sheaves with you—­your sheaves with you!”

As he had sometimes felt, gazing up from the deck at midnight into the boundless starlit depths overhead, in a rapture of devout wonder at that endless brightness and beauty—­in some such a way now, the depth of this pure devotion (which was, for the first time, revealed to him) quite smote upon him, and filled his heart with thanksgiving.  Gracious God, who was he, weak and friendless creature, that such a love should be poured out upon him?  Not in vain—­not in vain has he lived—­hard and thankless should he be to think so—­that has such a treasure given him.  What is ambition compared to that, but selfish vanity?  To be rich, to be famous?  What do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under the ground, along with idle titles engraven on your coffin?  But only true love lives after you—­follows your memory with secret blessing—­or precedes you, and intercedes for you.  Non omnis moriar—­if dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.