At any rate, the Lady Caroline's influence on the estates of
her father being considerable, she resolved to seek an interview
with the young girl in furtherance of her plan to save her
reputation, about which she was now exceedingly anxious; for by this
time, the fit being over, she began to be ashamed of her mad passion
for her late husband, and almost wished she had never seen him.
In the course of her parish-visiting she lighted on the young girl
without much difficulty, and found her looking pale and sad, and
wearing a simple black gown, which she had put on out of respect for
the young man's memory, whom she had tenderly loved, though he had
not loved her.
'Ah, you have lost your lover, Milly,' said Lady Caroline.
The young woman could not repress her tears. 'My lady, he was not
quite my lover,' she said. 'But I was his--and now he is dead I
don't care to live any more!'
'Can you keep a secret about him?' asks the lady; 'one in which his
honour is involved--which is known to me alone, but should be known
to you?'
The girl readily promised, and, indeed, could be safely trusted on
such a subject, so deep was her affection for the youth she mourned.
'Then meet me at his grave to-night, half-an-hour after sunset, and
I will tell it to you,' says the other.
In the dusk of that spring evening the two shadowy figures of the
young women converged upon the assistant-steward's newly-turfed
mound; and at that solemn place and hour, the one of birth and
beauty unfolded her tale: how she had loved him and married him
secretly; how he had died in her chamber; and how, to keep her
secret, she had dragged him to his own door.
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