She had beheld from
her window the march of the departing troops. She had seen her
faithless lover borne off, as if in triumph, amidst the sound of
drum and trumpet and the pomp of arms. She strained a last aching
gaze after him as the morning sun glittered about his figure and
his plume waved in the breeze; he passed away like a bright
vision from her sight, and left her all in darkness.
It would be trite to dwell on the particulars of her after story.
It was, like other tales of love, melancholy. She avoided society
and wandered out alone in the walks she had most frequented with
her lover. She sought, like the stricken deer, to weep in silence
and loneliness and brood over the barbed sorrow that rankled in
her soul. Sometimes she would be seen late of an evening sitting
in the porch of the village church, and the milk-maids, returning
from the fields, would now and then overhear her singing some
plaintive ditty in the hawthorn walk. She became fervent in her
devotions at church, and as the old people saw her approach, so
wasted away, yet with a hectic gloom and that hallowed air which
melancholy diffuses round the form, they would make way for her
as for something spiritual, and looking after her, would shake
their heads in gloomy foreboding.
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