Chapter XXVI. Love Never Dies

The brief meeting with Mrs. Everet had stirred the memory of old times in the heart of Mr. Emerson. With a vividness unknown for years, Ivy Cliff and the sweetness of many life-passages there came back to him, and set heart-pulses that he had deemed stilled for ever beating in tumultuous waves. When the business of the day was over he sat down in the silence of his chamber and turned his eyes inward. He pushed aside intervening year after year, until the long-ago past was, to his consciousness, almost as real as the living present. What he saw moved him deeply. He grew restless, then showed disturbance of manner. There was an effort to turn away from the haunting fascination of this long-buried, but now exhumed period; but the dust and scoria were removed, and it lifted, like another Pompeii, its desolate walls and silent chambers in the clear noon-rays of the present.

After a long but fruitless effort to bury the past again, to let the years close over it as the waves close over a treasure-laden ship, Mr. Emerson gave himself up to its thronging memories and let them bear him whither they would.

In this state of mind he unlocked one of the drawers in a secretary and took therefrom a small box or casket. Placing this on a table, he sat down and looked at it for some minutes, as if in doubt whether it were best for him to go further in this direction. Whether satisfied or not, he presently laid his fingers upon the lid of the casket and slowly opened it. It contained only a morocco case. He touched this as if it were something precious and sacred. For some moments after it was removed he sat holding it in his hand and looking at the dark, blank surface, as a long-expected letter is sometimes held before the seal is broken and the contents devoured with impatient eagerness. At last his finger pressed the spring on which it had been resting, and he looked upon a young, sweet face, whose eyes gazed back into his with a living tenderness. In a little while his hand so trembled, and his eyes grew so dim, that the face was veiled from his sight. Closing the miniature, but still retaining it in his hand, he leaned back in his chair and remained motionless, with shut eyes, for a long time; then he looked at the fair young face again, conning over every feature and expression, until sad memories came in and veiled it again with tears.

"Folly! weakness!" he said at last, pushing the picture from him and making a feeble effort to get back his manly self-possession. "The past is gone for ever. The page on which its sad history is written was closed long ago, and the book is sealed. Why unclasp the volume and search for that dark record again?"

Yet, even as he said this, his hand reached out for the miniature, and his eyes were on it ere the closing words had parted from his lips.

"Poor Irene!" he murmured, as he gazed on her pictured face. "You had a pure, tender,