When St. Elmo came out, the churchyard seemed deserted; but as he crossed it, going homeward, a woman rose from one of the tombstones and stood before him--the yellow-haired Jezebel, with sapphire eyes and soft, treacherous red lips, who had goaded him to madness and blasted the best years of his life.
At sight of her he recoiled, as if a cobra had started up in his path.
"St. Elmo, my beloved! in the name of other days stop and hear me. By the memory of our early love, I entreat you!"
She came close to him, and the alabaster face was marvelously beautiful in its expression of penitential sweetness.
"St. Elmo, can you never forgive me for the suffering I caused you in my giddy girlhood?"
She took his hand and attempted to raise it to her lips; but shaking off her touch, he stepped back, and steadily they looked in each other's eyes.
"Agnes, I forgive you. May God pardon your sins, as He has pardoned mine!"
He turned away, but she seized his coat-sleeve and threw herself before him, standing with both hands clasping his arm.
"If you mean what you say, there is happiness yet in store for us. Oh, St. Elmo! how often have I longed to come and lay my head down on your bosom, and tell you all. But you were so stern and harsh I was afraid. To-day when I saw you melted, when the look of your boyhood came dancing back to your dear eyes, I was encouraged to hope that your heart had softened also toward one, who so long possessed it. Is there hope for your poor Agnes? Hope that the blind, silly girl, who, ignorant of the value of the treasure, slighted and spurned it, may indeed be pardoned, when, as a woman realizing her folly, and sensible at last of the nobility of a nature she once failed to appreciate, she comes and says--what it is so hard for a woman to say--'Take me back to your heart, gather me up in your arms, as in the olden days, because--because I love you now; because only your love can make me happy.' St. Elmo, we are no longer young; but believe me when I tell you that at last--at last-- your own Agnes loves you as she never loved any one, even in her girlhood. Once I preferred my cousin Murray to you; but think how giddy I must have been, when I could marry before a year had settled the sod on his grave? I did not love my husband, but I married him for the same reason that I would have married you then. And yet for that there is some palliation. It was to save my father from disgrace that I sacrificed myself; for money entrusted to his keeping--money belonging to his orphan ward--had been used by him in a ruinous speculation, and only prompt repayment could prevent exposure. Remember I was so young, so vain, so thoughtless then! St. Elmo, pity me! love me! take me back to your heart! God is my witness that I do love you entirely now! Dearest, say, 'Agnes, I will forgive all, and trust you and love you as in the days long past.'"