What sacrifice could I make? _I_ had no pleasures,
no real comforts in life--nor the prospect of any--except one, and
even that was only a shadowy, misty hope, the merest uncertainty; but
it was my dearest, best-loved fancy, and I could not do more then than
resign it, so I knelt down, Amey, where you and I knelt side by side a
few nights later before you went away, and--" a sob came into her
throat and tears dimmed her eyes; my own were moist in expectation of
what was coming. She rested a little, and allowing her tears to fall
unwiped upon her cheeks, she took up the broken thread and added:
"I pledged myself to Our Blessed Lady, in soul and body for all the
days of my life, if, by her holy intercession the double conversions
of Bayard and Inez might be accomplished before I died."
"You mean that you promised--"
"Never to marry," she added eagerly "although at that time, only
Heaven knew how I had grown to love Ernest Dalton. I did not know he
was _your_ friend then, Amey. I fancied he had spoken in a
particularly kind way to me and he could not but see how fondly I
cherished his every word and look--but I gave him up--the only
sacrifice I had to lay upon that altar of supplication. Afterwards I
saw that what I had done out of solicitude for the welfare of those
who are nearest and dearest to me on earth would, perhaps, have been
exacted of me by the cruel irony of fate. Ernest Dalton loved you all
along, I suspected it on that day when we examined his locket
together, and your strange, conscious look when I spoke of him
convinced me of it easily.
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