"Where shall you go," she asked, "and what shall you do?"
"I shall go to my wife at once," he replied, "and take her
abroad. Do not look so pained and grieved for me, Miss Charteris
I must do the best I can. If my income will not support me, I
must work; a few months' study will make me a tolerable artist.
Do not forget my mother, Valentine, and bid me 'Godspeed.'"
Her heart yearned for him--so young, so simple, so brave. She
longed to tell him how much she admired him--how she wanted to
help him, and would be his friend while she lived. But Miss
Charteris rarely yielded to any emotion; she had laid her hand in
his and said:
"Goodbye, Ronald--God bless you! Be brave; it is not one great
deed that makes a hero. The man who bears trouble well is the
greatest hero of all."
As he left his home in that quiet starlit night, Ronald little
thought that, while his mother lay weeping as though her heart
would break, a beautiful face, wet with bitter tears, watched him
from one of the upper windows, and his father, shut up alone,
listened to every sound, and heard the door closed behind his son
as he would have heard his own death knell.
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