Love is strong as Death. Sorrow not as others that have no Hope.'
In smaller letters down below, 'This epitaph is at her own special request.'
"Sir," continued Aurelia, "it was very curious. I should not have observed those words if it had not been that a large beautiful butterfly, with rainbow eyes on its wings, sat sunning itself on the white marble, and Fay called me to look at it."
"Her message! May I ask you to repeat it again?"
"The texts? 'Love is strong as death. Sorrow not as others that have no hope.'"
"Did you call them Scripture texts?"
"Yes, sir; I know the last is in one of the Epistles, and I will look for the other."
"It matters not. She intended them for a message to me who lay in utter darkness and imbecility well befitting her destroyer."
"Nay, they have come to you at last," said Aurelia gently. "You really never knew of them before?"
"No, I durst not ask, nor did any one dare to speak to me. My brother, who alone would have done so, died, I scarcely know when; but ere the very consciousness of my own wretched existence had come back to me. Once again repeat the words, gentle messenger of mercy."
She obeyed, but this time he mournfully murmured, "Hope! What hope for their destroyer?"
"They are God's words, as well as hers," the girl answered, with diffident earnestness, but in reply she only heard tightened breaths, which made her say, "You cannot bear more, sir. Let me call Jumbo, and bid you good night."
Jumbo came at the mention of his name. Somehow he was so unlike other human beings, and so wholly devoted to his master, that it never seemed to be a greater shock to find that he had been present than if he had been a faithful dog.
A few days later he told Aurelia that Mas'r was not well enough to see her. He had set forth as soon as the moon had set, and walked with his trusty servant to Sedhurst, where he had traced with his finger the whole inscription, lingering so long that the sun was above the horizon before he could get home; and he was still lying on the bed where he had thrown himself on first coming in, having neither spoken nor eaten since. Jumbo could not but grumble out that Mas'r was better left to himself.
Yet when Aurelia on the third evening was recalled, there was a ring of refreshment in the voice. It was still melancholy, but the dejection was lessened, and though it was only of Achilles and Patroclus that they talked, she was convinced that the pressure of the heavy burthen of grief and remorse was in some degree lightened.