"You do, then, fear that this interview will be too much for her
strength?" said I, whisperingly.

"I cannot say; but she demands the interview, and I dare not refuse it."




CHAPTER LXXVIII.

I left Faber on the stairs, and paused at the door of Lilian's room. The
door opened suddenly, noiselessly, and her mother came out with one hand
before her face, and the other locked in Amy's, who was leading her as a
child leads the blind. Mrs. Ashleigh looked up, as I touched her, with a
vacant, dreary stare. She was not weeping, as was her womanly wont in
every pettier grief, but Amy was. No word was exchanged between us. I
entered, and closed the door; my eyes turned mechanically to the corner in
which was placed the small virgin bed, with its curtains white as a
shroud. Lilian was not there. I looked around, and saw her half reclined
on a couch near the window. She was dressed, and with care. Was not that
her bridal robe?

"Allen! Allen!" she murmured. "Again, again my Allen--again, again your
Lilian!" And, striving in vain to rise, she stretched out her arms in the
yearning of reunited love. And as I knelt beside her, those arms closed
round me for the first time in the frank, chaste, holy tenderness of a
wife's embrace.

"Ah!" she said, in her low voice (her voice, like Cordelia's, was ever