"Yes!--Don't you understand?" and her voice shook with excitement-- "All over! She is safe!--quite safe!--she will be well!--Mr. Walden!--John!--don't look at me like that! oh dear!" and she turned a piteous glance on Bishop Brent who was, to her, a complete stranger--"He doesn't seem to hear me--please speak to him!--do make him understand! Everything has been done successfully--and Maryllia will live--she will be her own dear bright self again! As soon as I heard the good news, I raced down here to tell you and everybody!-- oh John!--poor John!"
For, with a great sigh and a sudden stretching upward of his arms as though he sought to reach all Heaven with his soul's full measure of gratitude, John staggered blindly a few steps from the altar of the Saint's Rest and fell,--senseless.
* * * * * * * * Again the merry month of May came in rejoicing. Again the May-pole glorious with blossoms and ribbons, made its nodding royal progress through the village of St. Rest, escorted by well-nigh a hundred children, who, with laughter and song carried it triumphantly up to Abbot's Manor, and danced round it in a ring on the broad grassy terrace facing the open windows of Maryllia's favourite morning room, where Maryllia herself, sweet and fair as a very queen of spring, stood watching them, with John Walden at her side. Again their fresh young voices, gay with the musical hilarity of happiness, carolled the Mayer's song:-"We have been rambling all this night, And almost all this day; And now returning back again, We bring you in the May!
A branch of May we have brought you, And at your door it stands, 'Tis but a sprout, But 'tis budded out, By the work of our Lord's hands.
The heavenly gates are open wide, Our paths are beaten plain; And if a man be not too far gone, He may return again!"
"That's true!" said John, slipping an arm round his beloved, and whispering his words in the little delicate ear half-hidden by the clustering gold-brown curls above it--"If a man be not too far gone as a bachelor, he may perhaps 'return again' as a tolerable husband? What do you think, my Maryllia?"
Her eyes sparkled with all their own mirth and mischief.
"I couldn't possibly say--yet!" she said--"You are quite perfect as an engaged man,--I never heard of anybody quite so attentive--so-- well!--so nicely behaved!" and she laughed, "But how you will turn out when you are married, I shouldn't like to prophesy!"