"TILL DEATH US DO PART."

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1121, 5 December 1883, Page 4

"TILL DEATH US DO PART."

■'TiTTE' E A T U ,; RE.

(Continued.)

The woman came in with a thi'k letter, and the lights. Her mistress took it with nervous haste. A thick letter, and from her husband ! until now his letters had been of the thinnest ami slightest. The writing—was it Hqmphrey’s. Why, yet,, it was his; but what could make it look so shaky? She opened it. carefully, and some enclosures fell out. A fond letter or two of hers written to him after their marriage, during n temporary separation ; a curl of- her sunny hair; a plain 1 gold ring which he had worn over since his wedding day , ami a little folded note with a few trepibling lines in it. *I am dying, .Emma. Fell to-day : in buttle. God forgive us onr folly, my precious wife ! I believe we love** one another all the while. There is another life, my dear one. I shall be waiting for you there.—Humphrey.’/ Emma Carboned didmot cry, did not faint. She lay hack in a- low, large chair,, her meek hands clasped in supplication, praying to be pardoned for nil her hard wickedness to her dead husband, feebly beseeching God, in His mercy, to take her to that hitler life.' The;next day the papers published a list of the fallen. Fifteen soldiers and two officers, one of the latter being Captain Carbonel. * So •it was all over. Death had parted them. They had Jokerf “their marriage vows to love and to ■'cherish one another until death did them part — and lo I now it had stepped in do do its work. :

Air.| ;but something else had stepped in previously; angry passions indulged in, malice not suppressed. ’ But for that 'Carbonel had never gone out to the fatal plain where death was indiscriminately putting in ,his sickle. Emma Carbonel would have given now her own life to recall the past. Experience, must be bought; sometimes all 100 dearly. She saw how worse than foolish it is, taking it at the best, to render onr short existence here one of marring anger. Evil temper boars up at the moment, but lime must bring the reaction, and the repentance. A little forbearance on both sides, especially on hers, a few soothing wprds, instead of .-spiteful retorts, and. this bitter retribution has not been hcr.s; or his, in

dying. ,“ A soft answer tnrn«tli away wrath,” -If they had but obeyed the words of Holy Writ ! And now what, wag. loft to them? Death had claimed; him, and all was. , over. To her, alifertimo of ansnished remorse, a vein longing to undo what could never he undone in the world. Could not some of ns, hot ami hasty in om dealings, learn a lesson from it ? Bht something better was in store for Emnia Carhonel. Humphrey did not Within a week the news came to •her ihat the injuries, which had caused -n death-like swoon mistaken at the time 'for death, had not yet been fatal. He was removed to the hospital, was being treated there by skilful surgeons, and .the issue was as yet uncertain, ' The issue was not for death, hut life. Some months later he came home, a maimed soldier, hearing about him

marks which lime would never efface. Just at the dusk of evening, as she had pictured it in her fond dream, ho came. When the fly drove up to the doqr with him, she was surprised, for he was not expected, until the next day. He came in slowly, limping. The bustle over, the servants shaken hands with, he lay back, fatigued, in the cosy chair, Emm:* kneeling before him, clinging to him in passionate emotion, tears streaming from her eyes, whispering to him‘in deprecating terras to forgive her. ‘ Upon condition that you forgive me, Emma,’ he answered, agitated as herself. ‘lt has been a sharp experience for ns both. My.darling wife, Ido not think we shall ever quarrel with one another again.* ‘Never again ; never a single miswo:d again, Humphrey, so long as life shall last.’— Argosy.