A True Friend Part 58

"I thought you were such a devoted friend of hers!"

"I always tried to be a true friend to her. But you know I think, Wyvis, that some people have not got it in their nature to be true friends to anyone. And perhaps it was not--quite--in Margaret's nature."

"I agree with you," said Wyvis, more gravely than he had spoken hitherto. "She has not your depth of affection, Janetta--your strength of will. You have been a very true and loyal friend to those you have loved."

Janetta turned away her face. Something in his words touched her very keenly. After a pause, Wyvis spoke again.

"I have had reason since I saw you last to know the value of your friends.h.i.+p," he said seriously. "I want to speak to you for a moment, Janetta, before we join the others, about my poor Juliet. I had not, as you know, very many months with her after we left England. But during those few months I became aware that she was a different creature from the woman I had known in earlier days. She showed me that she had a heart--that she loved me and our boy after all--and died craving my forgiveness, poor soul (though G.o.d knows that I needed hers more than she needed mine), for the coldness she had often shown me. And she said, Janetta, that _you_ had taught her what love meant, and she charged me to tell you that your lessons had not been in vain."

Janetta looked up with swimming eyes. "Poor Juliet! I am glad that she said that."

"She is at peace now," said Wyvis, in a lower voice, "and the happiness of her later days is due to you. But how much is not due to you, Janetta! Your magic power seemed to change my poor wife's very nature: it has made my child happy: it gave all possible comfort to my mother on her dying bed--and what it has done for me no words can ever tell! No one has been to me what you have been, Janetta; the good angel of my life, always inspiring and encouraging, always ready to give me hope and strength and courage in my hours of despair."

"You must not say so: I have done nothing," she said, but she let her hand lie unresistingly between his own, as he took it and pressed it tenderly.

"Have you not? Then I have been woefully mistaken. And it has come across me strangely, Janetta, of late, that of all the losses I have had, one of the greatest is the loss of my kins.h.i.+p with you. No doubt you have thought of that: John Wyvis, the ploughman's son, is not your cousin, Wyvis Brand."

"I never remembered it," said Janetta.

"Then I must remind you of it now. I cannot call you Cousin Janet any longer. May I call you something else, dear, so that I may not lose you out of my life? I want you to be something infinitely closer and dearer and sweeter than a cousin, Janetta; will you forgive me all my errors and be my wife?"

And when she had whispered her reply, he took her in his arms and called her, as her father used to call her--

"My faithful Janet!"

And she thought that she had never borne a sweeter name.

THE END.