“Violet!”

A mutual look, a moment of perfect silence, then a low whisper, airy as the breath of flowers rising from the garden below:  “I have never known what happiness was till this moment.  If you will take me with my story untold—­”

“Take you! take you!” The man’s whole yearning heart, the loss and bitterness of years, the hope and promise of the future, all spoke in that low, half-smothered exclamation.  Violet’s blushes faded under its fervency, and only her spirit spoke, as leaning towards him, she laid her two hands in his, and said with all a woman’s earnestness: 

“I do not forget little Roger, or the father who I hope may have many more days before him in which to bid good-night to the sea.  Such union as ours must be hallowed, because we have so many persons to make happy besides ourselves.”

The evening before their marriage, Violet put a dozen folded sheets of closely written paper in his hand.  They contained her story; let us read it with him.

Dear Roger,—­

I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke up shivering, at the sound of angry voices.  A conversation which no child should ever have heard, was going on in the room where I lay.  My father was talking to my sister—­perhaps, you do not know that I have a sister; few of my personal friends do,—­ and the terror she evinced I could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his displeasure.

There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with all its original vividness.  There was no light in the room save such as the moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive in either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication and he in a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she listened to what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.

I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes; but she—­she was beautiful.  My elder by ten years, she had stood in my mother’s stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I saw her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in a desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my throat closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor move head or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in the pillows.

For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their full purport.  He had surprised her talking from her window to someone down below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out:  “You have disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced your brother and your little sister.  Was it not enough that you should refuse to marry the good man I had picked out for you, that you should stoop to this low-down scoundrel—­this—­” I did not hear what else he called him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had never seen her stoop except to tie my little shoes.